Democracy Now! - School of the Americashttp://www.democracynow.org/topics/school_of_the_americas
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144144Democracy Now! - School of the Americasen-USDemocracy Now! - School of the AmericasOut of Exile: Part II of Exclusive Report on Ousted Honduran President Zelaya’s Return 2 Years After U.S.-Backed Couphttp://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/1/the_two_top_generals_the_key
tag:democracynow.org,2011-06-01:en/story/c35003 AMY GOODMAN : We continue today with our coverage of the historic return of the Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya. On June 28th, 2009, hooded Honduran soldiers kidnapped Zelaya at gunpoint, put him on a plane to Costa Rica, stopping at a U.S. military base in Honduras called Palmerola.
Scores of peasants, teachers, journalists, farmers have been assassinated since the coup two years ago. This week, 87 U.S. Congress members sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling on her to suspend U.S. aid to the Honduran military and police, putting mechanisms in place &mdash; until mechanisms are in place to ensure security forces are held accountable for abuses.
Almost two years in exile, President Zelaya was, until his family was able to return this weekend. They were greeted by tens of thousands of supporters as they arrived Saturday in the capital city, Tegucigalpa.
I sat down with former President Zelaya at his home on Sunday and started by asking him if he supports the U.S. Congress members&#8217; calls to cut U.S. military aid to Honduras in light of the grave human rights violations.
MANUEL ZELAYA : [translated] I am not in favor of any action which involves violence. I am opposed to the death penalty. I am opposed to war. I am opposed to the acts of torture that are committed in all kinds of places around the world. And I am not in favor at all of increasing armaments or militarism. I am not opposed to security forces of the state. These have to exist. Defense and security forces have to exist. But violence always will be the worst method in order to correct either political or social problems. Poverty and corruption cannot be battled with more arms, but with more democracy.
AMY GOODMAN : What are your plans right now?
MANUEL ZELAYA : [translated] I came back because of one point of the accord that Lobo was in agreement with: reconciliation and free elections. If they have free elections within two years, the movement that I am the head of, we will win the elections. And I invite you in the year 2013 to come here and witness this election. Come and see the triumph of a popular movement, if there are elections that are free.
AMY GOODMAN : One last point. What about holding those who fomented the coup accountable? Do you believe that they should be punished?
MANUEL ZELAYA : [translated] Justice does not have any obstacle which should prevent it from moving forward. I presented international juridical complaints because of the coup, and they are still moving forward. The political crimes were also about creating an amnesty in Honduras. But the genocides, the magnicides, the assassinations and the tortures are a process which is ultimately judicial.
AMY GOODMAN : And you think they should be punished?
MANUEL ZELAYA : [translated] Justice should be applied for those who are responsible for the crimes.
AMY GOODMAN : How did you get into the country on the 21st of September?
MANUEL ZELAYA : [translated] There were a lot of people who cooperated with that. It took two days, overnight, and we finally achieved it. Eight military checkpoints. Several vehicles were used. Doubles, doubles of mine, were used. One was left in Nicaragua, another in Guatemala. And so, the cameras were filming those doubles, and I was already there, and I was sneaking into the country. And so, it was a strategy that we, ourselves, planned very well. And it was necessary. I wanted to enter in and to interfere with the system and to interfere with the Department of State itself, which was basically being very ambiguous.
AMY GOODMAN : So you have tried many times to come into this country. How does it feel to be home?
MANUEL ZELAYA : [translated] It has taken half of my stress away. To be in exile is a torture. It&#8217;s a torture. It&#8217;s a torture. In your unconscious, you feel something so strange to be in exile. Everything is strange in exile, and it&#8217;s a great pressure. And the pressure disappeared when I landed in Honduras, and it automatically disappeared. I was able to recover myself internally. There&#8217;s one word that a Dominican says, Juan Pablo Duarte: &quot;To live without a homeland is to live without honor.&quot; And that is exile.
AMY GOODMAN : That was former president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, speaking to us in his home in Tegucigalpa on Sunday, after his return. The September 21st we were talking about was September 21st, 2009. He had been ousted at the end of June. A week later, he attempted to fly into the country with the former head of the U.N. General Assembly, Miguel d&#8217;Escoto, the former foreign minister of Nicaragua. He attempted to fly in, but the military prevented him from landing at the Tegucigalpa airport by lining up trucks at the airport. More than 100,000 people gathered at the airport at that time to try to receive him. The Honduran military opened fire, and they killed a young man. When President Zelaya returned on Saturday, the first place he stopped was at the memorial for Isis Obed Murillo, 19 years old, who was killed on that day just a week after Zelaya had been ousted by hooded Honduran soldiers at gunpoint at his home at 5:00 in the morning. On September 21st, a few months later, Zelaya attempted to get into the country and succeeded. No one knew until now how exactly he did it, and he just told us about the body doubles. He made it into the capital, Tegucigalpa, and holed up in the Brazilian embassy for more than four months.
To see our reports with Democracy Now! &#8217;s Andrés Conteris in the embassy, you can go to our website at democracynow.org, as well as to see the full interview with President Zelaya, the zelaya on&quot;&gt;first part of which we played yesterday. AMYGOODMAN: We continue today with our coverage of the historic return of the Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya. On June 28th, 2009, hooded Honduran soldiers kidnapped Zelaya at gunpoint, put him on a plane to Costa Rica, stopping at a U.S. military base in Honduras called Palmerola.

Scores of peasants, teachers, journalists, farmers have been assassinated since the coup two years ago. This week, 87 U.S. Congress members sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling on her to suspend U.S. aid to the Honduran military and police, putting mechanisms in place — until mechanisms are in place to ensure security forces are held accountable for abuses.

Almost two years in exile, President Zelaya was, until his family was able to return this weekend. They were greeted by tens of thousands of supporters as they arrived Saturday in the capital city, Tegucigalpa.

I sat down with former President Zelaya at his home on Sunday and started by asking him if he supports the U.S. Congress members’ calls to cut U.S. military aid to Honduras in light of the grave human rights violations.

MANUELZELAYA: [translated] I am not in favor of any action which involves violence. I am opposed to the death penalty. I am opposed to war. I am opposed to the acts of torture that are committed in all kinds of places around the world. And I am not in favor at all of increasing armaments or militarism. I am not opposed to security forces of the state. These have to exist. Defense and security forces have to exist. But violence always will be the worst method in order to correct either political or social problems. Poverty and corruption cannot be battled with more arms, but with more democracy.

AMYGOODMAN: What are your plans right now?

MANUELZELAYA: [translated] I came back because of one point of the accord that Lobo was in agreement with: reconciliation and free elections. If they have free elections within two years, the movement that I am the head of, we will win the elections. And I invite you in the year 2013 to come here and witness this election. Come and see the triumph of a popular movement, if there are elections that are free.

AMYGOODMAN: One last point. What about holding those who fomented the coup accountable? Do you believe that they should be punished?

MANUELZELAYA: [translated] Justice does not have any obstacle which should prevent it from moving forward. I presented international juridical complaints because of the coup, and they are still moving forward. The political crimes were also about creating an amnesty in Honduras. But the genocides, the magnicides, the assassinations and the tortures are a process which is ultimately judicial.

AMYGOODMAN: And you think they should be punished?

MANUELZELAYA: [translated] Justice should be applied for those who are responsible for the crimes.

AMYGOODMAN: How did you get into the country on the 21st of September?

MANUELZELAYA: [translated] There were a lot of people who cooperated with that. It took two days, overnight, and we finally achieved it. Eight military checkpoints. Several vehicles were used. Doubles, doubles of mine, were used. One was left in Nicaragua, another in Guatemala. And so, the cameras were filming those doubles, and I was already there, and I was sneaking into the country. And so, it was a strategy that we, ourselves, planned very well. And it was necessary. I wanted to enter in and to interfere with the system and to interfere with the Department of State itself, which was basically being very ambiguous.

AMYGOODMAN: So you have tried many times to come into this country. How does it feel to be home?

MANUELZELAYA: [translated] It has taken half of my stress away. To be in exile is a torture. It’s a torture. It’s a torture. In your unconscious, you feel something so strange to be in exile. Everything is strange in exile, and it’s a great pressure. And the pressure disappeared when I landed in Honduras, and it automatically disappeared. I was able to recover myself internally. There’s one word that a Dominican says, Juan Pablo Duarte: "To live without a homeland is to live without honor." And that is exile.

AMYGOODMAN: That was former president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, speaking to us in his home in Tegucigalpa on Sunday, after his return. The September 21st we were talking about was September 21st, 2009. He had been ousted at the end of June. A week later, he attempted to fly into the country with the former head of the U.N. General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto, the former foreign minister of Nicaragua. He attempted to fly in, but the military prevented him from landing at the Tegucigalpa airport by lining up trucks at the airport. More than 100,000 people gathered at the airport at that time to try to receive him. The Honduran military opened fire, and they killed a young man. When President Zelaya returned on Saturday, the first place he stopped was at the memorial for Isis Obed Murillo, 19 years old, who was killed on that day just a week after Zelaya had been ousted by hooded Honduran soldiers at gunpoint at his home at 5:00 in the morning. On September 21st, a few months later, Zelaya attempted to get into the country and succeeded. No one knew until now how exactly he did it, and he just told us about the body doubles. He made it into the capital, Tegucigalpa, and holed up in the Brazilian embassy for more than four months.

To see our reports with Democracy Now!’s Andrés Conteris in the embassy, you can go to our website at democracynow.org, as well as to see the full interview with President Zelaya, the zelayaon">first part of which we played yesterday.

]]>
Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400Out of Exile: Exclusive Report on Ousted Honduran President Zelaya's Return Home 23 Months After U.S.-Backed Couphttp://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/31/out_of_exile_exclusive_report_on
tag:democracynow.org,2011-05-31:en/story/0f8afb
MANUEL ZELAYA : [translated] Thanks to you, I was able to return to the land that witnessed my birth. Thanks to your fight. Thanks to your effort, comrade. Thanks to your effort, comrade. Thanks to your demands. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : Honduran President Manuel Zelaya returned to his country this weekend after being ousted at gunpoint in a military coup on June 28th, 2009. In a U.S. broadcast exclusive, Democracy Now! takes you on Zelaya&#8217;s flight home. Our journey began in the Nicaraguan capital on Friday.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;ve just landed in Managua. We have two people who just came in from Spain. Interestingly, one of them is from Honduras. He is a leader of the grassroots movement in Honduras.
RENÉ GUILLERMO AMADOR : [translated] My name is René Guillermo Amador. Twenty months in exile. After the coup d&#8217;état, I had to leave, and that&#8217;s why we&#8217;ve been in Spain this whole time. I wrote an email to President Zelaya some time ago saying that he should go back to Honduras. And we made the commitment that we would be there with him at the moment at which he would do that.
It&#8217;s very difficult to do it at this time because the points that the resistance front has been pushing for have not been complied with. And to give a vote of confidence to a regime that has not complied with the minimum respect is something that causes us great pain. But there are over 200 compañeros and compañeras who have not been able to return from exile, so this is one of the points that is not consistent.
AMY GOODMAN : René, why did you have to leave?
RENÉ GUILLERMO AMADOR : [translated] Because the situation to guarantee the safety of our lives was no longer guaranteed within Honduras.
AMY GOODMAN : So, Father Roy Bourgeois, you have just landed in Managua, Nicaragua. Why are you here?
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : Well, you know, the SOA Watch movement that so many in the United States are a part of &mdash;
AMY GOODMAN : School of the Americas Watch.
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : The School of the Americas Watch. When the military coup took place close to two years ago, we were very, very upset by this, as so many were here in Honduras. And we came just a few days after the coup to express our solidarity.
AMY GOODMAN : To Honduras?
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : To Honduras.
AMY GOODMAN : After Zelaya was forced out.
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : Yes, just a few days after, we came here to meet with our friends, counterparts, we had met years &mdash; you know, during these years. And I must say, we were very, very alarmed at the seriousness of the situation. This military coup had real connections to the School of the Americas. The two top generals, the key players in this military coup &mdash; the head of the air force, the head of the army &mdash; were graduates of the School of Americas, which did not really surprise us. It&#8217;s been a pattern throughout the years.
So we came back then, and we are back now to express our support and solidarity with the people of Honduras, who really are living under intense repression. We were in Honduras just a month ago to follow up our visit after the coup, to meet once again with our friends here to get an update on what&#8217;s going on. And we met with many campesinos , the small farmers way out into the countryside, teachers, labor leaders. And we were quite surprised to see, once again, that fear, that repression, that&#8217;s still very alive in Honduras.
What saddens us, though, is that &mdash; well, first of all, when the coup happened, what we heard was President Obama, immediately after the coup, did say that it was a military coup and that the President, President Zelaya, must return with no conditions. He was the democratically elected president. But I must say, these were words only that lasted, I would say, about 24 hours. And something happened, Amy. They got to President Obama, and he did not use that word ever again, along with Secretary of State Clinton and others. Those who used that word &quot;coup&quot; when it actually &mdash; what do you call it when the president, democratically elected president of a country, at 5:00 in the morning is awakened with his pajamas at gunpoint and put on a plane and flown out of the country and could not return? What do you call it other than a military coup? And actually, a few days later, we came here, where we met also with our U.S. ambassador, Llorens. And he also referred to it as a military coup, and he said the same thing as we were saying: what do you call it if this is not a coup? But something happened. They stopped using that word &quot;coup.&quot;
And we were very, very disappointed in President Obama. There was such an opportunity, as President Zelaya expressed and so many of the people in Honduras, that our president &mdash; you know, we have such influence and power in this region, throughout the world, and especially in this small country, Honduras. We really could have done something, within a short while, to bring President Zelaya back to this country &mdash; cut off military aid, withdraw our U.S. ambassador. But none of this happened. But now we see this as somewhat of a historic moment here with the return of the democratically elected president, Zelaya, Mel, as he&#8217;s known by so many.
AMY GOODMAN : The delegation that will accompany Zelaya greets him at a hotel across the street from Sandino International Airport. I ask Zelaya how he feels.
How do you feel right now?
MANUEL ZELAYA : [translated] I feel very full of hope and optimism and just very good feelings. The dialogue that we have yet to come, and the political action, is possible instead of armaments. No to violence. No to military coups. Coups never more.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, I can&#8217;t believe who I&#8217;m seeing right now here across from the airport in Managua, Nicaragua. The last time we saw each other was in Port-au-Prince when you greeted President Aristide, who was ousted and returned home in Haiti. Now here are about to get on a plane with President Zelaya to return to Honduras. Piedad Córdoba, why are you here?
PIEDAD CÓRDOBA: [translated] I am Piedad Córdoba. I am the spokesperson of Colombians, both men and women, for peace. This is a process that we have been accompanying since the coup d&#8217;état itself some time ago.
AMY GOODMAN : You yourself had been kidnapped.
PIEDAD CÓRDOBA: [translated] Yes, I was in fact kidnapped by the paramilitaries.
AMY GOODMAN : For how long?
PIEDAD CÓRDOBA: [translated] Sixteen days.
AMY GOODMAN : And this was when you were a state legislator?
PIEDAD CÓRDOBA: [translated] Yes, it was when in the Senate of the Republic, and that was some 10 years ago.
AMY GOODMAN : What does it mean that it was President Santos, the Colombian president, and President Chávez of Venezuela who witnessed this accord between the current president of Honduras, Lobo, and the ousted president, Zelaya, for Zelaya&#8217;s return?
PIEDAD CÓRDOBA: [translated] The message is very, very clear, and it has to do with politics. It is the triumph of politics against war. It was very much easier to have confrontation and to have war than to have dialogue and sensibilities. And so, it is an absolute, overwhelming triumph of this kind of politics. It gives the possibility for the people to really witness and be involved in differences and to be witnesses of the true change that comes with that process.
AMY GOODMAN : Piedad Córdoba, former Colombian senator, one of the many representatives of Latin American countries who accompanied ousted president Zelaya and his family on their historic trip home. When we come back, we take you on the flight to Honduras and sit down with President Zelaya to talk about the day the military kidnapped him at gunpoint and why he believes the U.S. is behind the coup. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : We continue our special on the return of Manuel Zelaya.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re coming onto the tarmac right now, where President Zelaya, his family, his supporters have all gathered to get on the flight to go home to Tegucigalpa, to Honduras, for the first time in almost two years. It&#8217;s hot. It&#8217;s windy. And it&#8217;s a historic occasion. As one ambassador said to me, this is Latin America&#8217;s moment. President Zelaya just said, as I was interviewing him, this means no war, no violence, no more coups. We&#8217;re getting on the flight.
PATRICIA RODAS : [translated] I am Patricia Rodas, ex-president of the Liberal Party of Honduras. And also I am the ex-foreign minister of the citizens&#8217; power of the President, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales.
AMY GOODMAN : When were you last in Honduras?
PATRICIA RODAS : [translated] I was expelled from my country by the military. They came to my house. I was taken prisoner by the air force of Honduras. And then, later, they deported me at midnight, and they transferred me in the airplane. Apparently, this airplane belonged to Miguel Facussé, the plane in which I was transferred. I was transferred forcibly and expatriated forcibly. And at that moment, I was received by the Republic of Mexico.
AMY GOODMAN : And your feeling right now?
PATRICIA RODAS : [translated] It is absolutely indescribable. These are absolutely feelings that are bittersweet. And what we will miss in this new struggle, this new step of the struggle, we will miss the compañeros , the men and women whose lives were lost by the repression, the persecution.
AMY GOODMAN : The family of President Zelaya has now just gotten on the flight, and now President Zelaya himself, in his signature cowboy hat, is coming onto the red carpet. This is the beginning of another journey that began for President Mel Zelaya two years ago in Honduras. He was driven out of the country at gunpoint in a military coup. What happens next is not clear. The flight from Managua to Tegucigalpa is expected to be about half an hour. We hear that tens of thousands of people are waiting for him in his home country.
We have just flown from Nicaraguan airspace into Honduran airspace. President Zelaya and his wife Xiomara, they&#8217;re in the front row. And actually, the President has flown over Tegucigalpa before, but he was not able to land. It was a very fateful day when hundreds of thousands gathered at the airport in Tegucigalpa to greet him. Andrés Conteris, with Democracy Now! en Español, has been translating for us.
Talk about that day. The date was...?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : The date was July 5th, 2009, Amy, and it was a very, very fateful day. It was the day when the people of Honduras went in massive force to the Toncontín airport in Tegucigalpa, one of the most dangerous airports in the world, I might add, and we&#8217;re about to land there. This airport is the place where President Zelaya first attempted to return into his country after the coup on June 28th, 2009. He was not allowed to land. They blocked the airstrip with military trucks. And then, there were 250,000, it is estimated; that many people, a quarter million, were there to receive their president. And I was there, as well. And we all wanted that plane to land. We could see the plane in the air, just as when we approach in about 15 minutes they will be able to see us. And what happened is that that plane was not allowed to land.
And what happened after that? The people continued in a very peaceful protest. And that peaceful protest turned violent, not by the demonstrators, not by those who were protesting, but by the military and the police who started shooting at the crowd. And there were several victims who were wounded, but one who was killed. His name is Isis Obed Murillo, 19 years old at the time on July 5th, 2009. And there is a monument in his honor very near the airport where he died. I have been at that monument at a moment when there have been ceremonies in honor of the martyrs of the coup d&#8217;état of Honduras. It&#8217;s actually the very first place that I saw Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the wife of President Zelaya, who stayed in Honduras after he was expatriated in the coup.
AMY GOODMAN : President Zelaya has landed in Honduras with his family. He is just about to step out of the plane. We saw thousands of people on the outskirts of the airport waving flags. We also saw riot police. Now, a small gaggle of press is going to document his arrival.
When President Zelaya walks off the plane, he kneels down and kisses the ground. After greeting family and friends, many of whom he hadn&#8217;t seen for years, his motorcade slowly made its way through massive crowds to the rally to thank his supporters. It was held at the memorial to the young man killed by Honduran security when Zelaya had attempted to land in Honduras a week after the coup. President Zelaya addressed the crowd. Zelaya then went to the presidential palace and had a ceremonial banquet with the delegation that accompanied him on the flight, as well as the current Honduran president, Porfirio Lobo, and OAS Secretary General Insulza. President Zelaya then went home for the first time in 23 months. Friends and family gathered throughout the house, including his bedroom, singing songs and greeting each other.

MANUELZELAYA: [translated] Thanks to you, I was able to return to the land that witnessed my birth. Thanks to your fight. Thanks to your effort, comrade. Thanks to your effort, comrade. Thanks to your demands. Thank you.

AMYGOODMAN: Honduran President Manuel Zelaya returned to his country this weekend after being ousted at gunpoint in a military coup on June 28th, 2009. In a U.S. broadcast exclusive, Democracy Now! takes you on Zelaya’s flight home. Our journey began in the Nicaraguan capital on Friday.

AMYGOODMAN: We’ve just landed in Managua. We have two people who just came in from Spain. Interestingly, one of them is from Honduras. He is a leader of the grassroots movement in Honduras.

RENÉ GUILLERMOAMADOR: [translated] My name is René Guillermo Amador. Twenty months in exile. After the coup d’état, I had to leave, and that’s why we’ve been in Spain this whole time. I wrote an email to President Zelaya some time ago saying that he should go back to Honduras. And we made the commitment that we would be there with him at the moment at which he would do that.

It’s very difficult to do it at this time because the points that the resistance front has been pushing for have not been complied with. And to give a vote of confidence to a regime that has not complied with the minimum respect is something that causes us great pain. But there are over 200 compañeros and compañeras who have not been able to return from exile, so this is one of the points that is not consistent.

AMYGOODMAN: René, why did you have to leave?

RENÉ GUILLERMOAMADOR: [translated] Because the situation to guarantee the safety of our lives was no longer guaranteed within Honduras.

AMYGOODMAN: So, Father Roy Bourgeois, you have just landed in Managua, Nicaragua. Why are you here?

FATHERROYBOURGEOIS: Well, you know, the SOA Watch movement that so many in the United States are a part of —

AMYGOODMAN: School of the Americas Watch.

FATHERROYBOURGEOIS: The School of the Americas Watch. When the military coup took place close to two years ago, we were very, very upset by this, as so many were here in Honduras. And we came just a few days after the coup to express our solidarity.

AMYGOODMAN: To Honduras?

FATHERROYBOURGEOIS: To Honduras.

AMYGOODMAN: After Zelaya was forced out.

FATHERROYBOURGEOIS: Yes, just a few days after, we came here to meet with our friends, counterparts, we had met years — you know, during these years. And I must say, we were very, very alarmed at the seriousness of the situation. This military coup had real connections to the School of the Americas. The two top generals, the key players in this military coup — the head of the air force, the head of the army — were graduates of the School of Americas, which did not really surprise us. It’s been a pattern throughout the years.

So we came back then, and we are back now to express our support and solidarity with the people of Honduras, who really are living under intense repression. We were in Honduras just a month ago to follow up our visit after the coup, to meet once again with our friends here to get an update on what’s going on. And we met with many campesinos, the small farmers way out into the countryside, teachers, labor leaders. And we were quite surprised to see, once again, that fear, that repression, that’s still very alive in Honduras.

What saddens us, though, is that — well, first of all, when the coup happened, what we heard was President Obama, immediately after the coup, did say that it was a military coup and that the President, President Zelaya, must return with no conditions. He was the democratically elected president. But I must say, these were words only that lasted, I would say, about 24 hours. And something happened, Amy. They got to President Obama, and he did not use that word ever again, along with Secretary of State Clinton and others. Those who used that word "coup" when it actually — what do you call it when the president, democratically elected president of a country, at 5:00 in the morning is awakened with his pajamas at gunpoint and put on a plane and flown out of the country and could not return? What do you call it other than a military coup? And actually, a few days later, we came here, where we met also with our U.S. ambassador, Llorens. And he also referred to it as a military coup, and he said the same thing as we were saying: what do you call it if this is not a coup? But something happened. They stopped using that word "coup."

And we were very, very disappointed in President Obama. There was such an opportunity, as President Zelaya expressed and so many of the people in Honduras, that our president — you know, we have such influence and power in this region, throughout the world, and especially in this small country, Honduras. We really could have done something, within a short while, to bring President Zelaya back to this country — cut off military aid, withdraw our U.S. ambassador. But none of this happened. But now we see this as somewhat of a historic moment here with the return of the democratically elected president, Zelaya, Mel, as he’s known by so many.

AMYGOODMAN: The delegation that will accompany Zelaya greets him at a hotel across the street from Sandino International Airport. I ask Zelaya how he feels.

How do you feel right now?

MANUELZELAYA: [translated] I feel very full of hope and optimism and just very good feelings. The dialogue that we have yet to come, and the political action, is possible instead of armaments. No to violence. No to military coups. Coups never more.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, I can’t believe who I’m seeing right now here across from the airport in Managua, Nicaragua. The last time we saw each other was in Port-au-Prince when you greeted President Aristide, who was ousted and returned home in Haiti. Now here are about to get on a plane with President Zelaya to return to Honduras. Piedad Córdoba, why are you here?

PIEDAD CÓRDOBA: [translated] I am Piedad Córdoba. I am the spokesperson of Colombians, both men and women, for peace. This is a process that we have been accompanying since the coup d’état itself some time ago.

AMYGOODMAN: You yourself had been kidnapped.

PIEDAD CÓRDOBA: [translated] Yes, I was in fact kidnapped by the paramilitaries.

AMYGOODMAN: For how long?

PIEDAD CÓRDOBA: [translated] Sixteen days.

AMYGOODMAN: And this was when you were a state legislator?

PIEDAD CÓRDOBA: [translated] Yes, it was when in the Senate of the Republic, and that was some 10 years ago.

AMYGOODMAN: What does it mean that it was President Santos, the Colombian president, and President Chávez of Venezuela who witnessed this accord between the current president of Honduras, Lobo, and the ousted president, Zelaya, for Zelaya’s return?

PIEDAD CÓRDOBA: [translated] The message is very, very clear, and it has to do with politics. It is the triumph of politics against war. It was very much easier to have confrontation and to have war than to have dialogue and sensibilities. And so, it is an absolute, overwhelming triumph of this kind of politics. It gives the possibility for the people to really witness and be involved in differences and to be witnesses of the true change that comes with that process.

AMYGOODMAN: Piedad Córdoba, former Colombian senator, one of the many representatives of Latin American countries who accompanied ousted president Zelaya and his family on their historic trip home. When we come back, we take you on the flight to Honduras and sit down with President Zelaya to talk about the day the military kidnapped him at gunpoint and why he believes the U.S. is behind the coup. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: We continue our special on the return of Manuel Zelaya.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re coming onto the tarmac right now, where President Zelaya, his family, his supporters have all gathered to get on the flight to go home to Tegucigalpa, to Honduras, for the first time in almost two years. It’s hot. It’s windy. And it’s a historic occasion. As one ambassador said to me, this is Latin America’s moment. President Zelaya just said, as I was interviewing him, this means no war, no violence, no more coups. We’re getting on the flight.

PATRICIARODAS: [translated] I am Patricia Rodas, ex-president of the Liberal Party of Honduras. And also I am the ex-foreign minister of the citizens’ power of the President, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales.

AMYGOODMAN: When were you last in Honduras?

PATRICIARODAS: [translated] I was expelled from my country by the military. They came to my house. I was taken prisoner by the air force of Honduras. And then, later, they deported me at midnight, and they transferred me in the airplane. Apparently, this airplane belonged to Miguel Facussé, the plane in which I was transferred. I was transferred forcibly and expatriated forcibly. And at that moment, I was received by the Republic of Mexico.

AMYGOODMAN: And your feeling right now?

PATRICIARODAS: [translated] It is absolutely indescribable. These are absolutely feelings that are bittersweet. And what we will miss in this new struggle, this new step of the struggle, we will miss the compañeros, the men and women whose lives were lost by the repression, the persecution.

AMYGOODMAN: The family of President Zelaya has now just gotten on the flight, and now President Zelaya himself, in his signature cowboy hat, is coming onto the red carpet. This is the beginning of another journey that began for President Mel Zelaya two years ago in Honduras. He was driven out of the country at gunpoint in a military coup. What happens next is not clear. The flight from Managua to Tegucigalpa is expected to be about half an hour. We hear that tens of thousands of people are waiting for him in his home country.

We have just flown from Nicaraguan airspace into Honduran airspace. President Zelaya and his wife Xiomara, they’re in the front row. And actually, the President has flown over Tegucigalpa before, but he was not able to land. It was a very fateful day when hundreds of thousands gathered at the airport in Tegucigalpa to greet him. Andrés Conteris, with Democracy Now! en Español, has been translating for us.

Talk about that day. The date was...?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: The date was July 5th, 2009, Amy, and it was a very, very fateful day. It was the day when the people of Honduras went in massive force to the Toncontín airport in Tegucigalpa, one of the most dangerous airports in the world, I might add, and we’re about to land there. This airport is the place where President Zelaya first attempted to return into his country after the coup on June 28th, 2009. He was not allowed to land. They blocked the airstrip with military trucks. And then, there were 250,000, it is estimated; that many people, a quarter million, were there to receive their president. And I was there, as well. And we all wanted that plane to land. We could see the plane in the air, just as when we approach in about 15 minutes they will be able to see us. And what happened is that that plane was not allowed to land.

And what happened after that? The people continued in a very peaceful protest. And that peaceful protest turned violent, not by the demonstrators, not by those who were protesting, but by the military and the police who started shooting at the crowd. And there were several victims who were wounded, but one who was killed. His name is Isis Obed Murillo, 19 years old at the time on July 5th, 2009. And there is a monument in his honor very near the airport where he died. I have been at that monument at a moment when there have been ceremonies in honor of the martyrs of the coup d’état of Honduras. It’s actually the very first place that I saw Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the wife of President Zelaya, who stayed in Honduras after he was expatriated in the coup.

AMYGOODMAN: President Zelaya has landed in Honduras with his family. He is just about to step out of the plane. We saw thousands of people on the outskirts of the airport waving flags. We also saw riot police. Now, a small gaggle of press is going to document his arrival.

When President Zelaya walks off the plane, he kneels down and kisses the ground. After greeting family and friends, many of whom he hadn’t seen for years, his motorcade slowly made its way through massive crowds to the rally to thank his supporters. It was held at the memorial to the young man killed by Honduran security when Zelaya had attempted to land in Honduras a week after the coup. President Zelaya addressed the crowd. Zelaya then went to the presidential palace and had a ceremonial banquet with the delegation that accompanied him on the flight, as well as the current Honduran president, Porfirio Lobo, and OAS Secretary General Insulza. President Zelaya then went home for the first time in 23 months. Friends and family gathered throughout the house, including his bedroom, singing songs and greeting each other.

]]>
Tue, 31 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400AUDIO: "A Return to Democracy in Honduras?" Amy Goodman Reports on Zelaya's Return to Hondurashttp://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/5/30/audio_a_return_to_democracy_in_honduras_amy_goodman_reports_on_zelayas_return_to_honduras
tag:democracynow.org,2011-05-30:blog/20b550 Amy Goodman files her first audio report from Nicaragua on ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya&#8217;s historic return home. She filed this report from the airport in Managua where she interviewed Father Roy Bourgeois of SOA Watch.
FOR LATEST REPORTS ON HONDURAS VISIT OUR LIVE BLOG
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN : I’m Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now! We are in Managua, Nicaragua, for an historic event: the return of ousted president Manuel Zelaya of Honduras to Honduras. Two years ago, on June 28th, 2009, he was thrown out at gunpoint. The Honduran military threw President Zelaya out of the country. Now he is returning on May 28th, 2011.
The deal that was brokered in Colombia, called the Cartagena Agreement, was witnessed by the presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and Colombia, President [Juan Manuel] Santos. The deal was worked out between ousted president Manual Zelaya and the current president of Honduras Porfirio Lobo. They have agreed on a number of points. Among them that President Zelaya and over 200 exiles can return safely home. That there will be a constitutional assembly that will be allowed to be set up. That the party that now Manuel Zelaya heads called the Resistance will be guaranteed to be able to be a legal political party. And that a Secretariat for Justice and Human Rights will be set up to deal with the terrible human rights situation in Honduras.
President Zelaya will soon be boarding the flight for the short trip between Managua and Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Democracy Now! will be the only American media organization on that flight. Among those who are going to be on that flight are Father Roy Bourgeois, long time head of the School of the Americas Watch. He founded the School of the Americas Watch. He’s joining me right here in Managua to talk about the significance of the fact that the Honduran military, the chief of staff of which, General Vázquez Velázquez, was trained at the School of Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, which is why Father Roy Bourgeois is here to attend this moment.
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : In the endless struggle for democracy, for justice and peace in the Americas, there come along every now and then, special moments, historic moments, this is one of them. The School of Americas Watch really is honored and humbled to be invited to return with the democratically elected president Zelaya who was forcibly kicked out of the country. We’re honored because really the SOA Watch movement, made up of thousands in the United States, has been trying to walk in solidarity with our sisters and brothers here in Honduras, who had been on the receiving end of these brutal soldiers with Battalion 3-16 and of course the two key players in this &mdash; the head of the air force, the head of the army, as expected, were graduates of the School of the Americas. Really this School has caused untold suffering and death in Honduras and throughout Latin America. And we are here really to say to the people of Honduras, that there are people in the United States &mdash; or in “the empire” as they often refer to us, and as we have been in the past in relation to Honduras and other countries &mdash; we are here representing many in the United States who are saying, “We are with you in your struggle for democracy, for sovereignty, for self-determination.”
AMY GOODMAN : Father Roy Bourgeois, you have been in Honduras protesting the current regime during this two year period.
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : Yes, we came just a few days after the coup to meet with the resistance and what we found was very frightening. A lot of fear. The military took hold. They have killed really hundreds, teachers, especially the campesinos, the landless farmers, human rights activists, journalists among them. They do these acts of torture in disappearing and killing with impunity. We came back just last month actually to demonstrate once again, to meet with our counterparts, and our friends here to get updated, and we were shocked to see the intensity of the repression. And the fear is still here. But we also before leaving went before our US Embassy here in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to say that we are from the United States, representing many in our country and we are asking for the United States to stand in solidarity with President Zelaya, to be on the side of democracy and self-determination.
AMY GOODMAN : It’s very interesting that with the release of WikiLeaks of US government cables, among those cables was a cable that was sent by the US Ambassador to Honduras in July 24th, 2009. It was sent by Ambassador Hugo Llorens; the subject: Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup. And it said there was no doubt that the events of June 28th constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup. The Embassy described it as an “abduction”, a “kidnapping”. At first, President Obama did call this a coup, but then the US government seemed to back off, although the US joined in a UN General Assembly vote, with the first ever universal condemnation of a coup in a vote in the UN General Assembly. The OAS (Organization of American States) expelled Honduras for this illegal act. The United States did not fully sanction Honduras, in fact continued a relationship with Honduras, and many feel that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was working behind the scenes, and in front of the scenes, to restore Honduras to the Organization of American States. Clearly this has now been the motivation: Honduras’s readmission to the Organization of American States, the OAS , for this accord. President Porfirio Lobo wants Honduras in the OAS and right now, right now this is extremely significant, what is taking place.
I was just speaking to Ecuador’s ambassador to Venezuela who will be on this historic flight as well from Managua to Tegucigalpa today. He said, his name, Ramon Torres Galarza, that this is an historic moment. He said it’s also very important as this was worked out by Latin American countries together. This is a Latin American moment, he said. He said Latin America, especially he was addressing this to President Obama, he said Latin America is not just a market, it is a continent, it is a culture, he said we are peoples, we are societies, with dreams. Throughout Latin America there is tremendous excitement right now as there is in Honduras for this return. People are hoping this will be the return of democracy to Honduras but we will see.
We now await the flight as people gather from all over. When we arrived last night from the United States we met at the airport one of the exiles who had left Honduras four months after the coup. It was too dangerous to stay. He has been in Spain for the last 20 months, and he has returned. People are gathering here, extremely excited about this flight, about what they’re hoping is a return to democracy in Honduras.
I’m Amy Goodman, reporting from Managua, Nicaragua.
FOR LATEST REPORTS ON HONDURAS VISIT OUR LIVE BLOG
Amy Goodman files her first audio report from Nicaragua on ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya’s historic return home. She filed this report from the airport in Managua where she interviewed Father Roy Bourgeois of SOA Watch.

AMYGOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now! We are in Managua, Nicaragua, for an historic event: the return of ousted president Manuel Zelaya of Honduras to Honduras. Two years ago, on June 28th, 2009, he was thrown out at gunpoint. The Honduran military threw President Zelaya out of the country. Now he is returning on May 28th, 2011.

The deal that was brokered in Colombia, called the Cartagena Agreement, was witnessed by the presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and Colombia, President [Juan Manuel] Santos. The deal was worked out between ousted president Manual Zelaya and the current president of Honduras Porfirio Lobo. They have agreed on a number of points. Among them that President Zelaya and over 200 exiles can return safely home. That there will be a constitutional assembly that will be allowed to be set up. That the party that now Manuel Zelaya heads called the Resistance will be guaranteed to be able to be a legal political party. And that a Secretariat for Justice and Human Rights will be set up to deal with the terrible human rights situation in Honduras.

President Zelaya will soon be boarding the flight for the short trip between Managua and Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Democracy Now! will be the only American media organization on that flight. Among those who are going to be on that flight are Father Roy Bourgeois, long time head of the School of the Americas Watch. He founded the School of the Americas Watch. He’s joining me right here in Managua to talk about the significance of the fact that the Honduran military, the chief of staff of which, General Vázquez Velázquez, was trained at the School of Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, which is why Father Roy Bourgeois is here to attend this moment.

FATHERROYBOURGEOIS: In the endless struggle for democracy, for justice and peace in the Americas, there come along every now and then, special moments, historic moments, this is one of them. The School of Americas Watch really is honored and humbled to be invited to return with the democratically elected president Zelaya who was forcibly kicked out of the country. We’re honored because really the SOA Watch movement, made up of thousands in the United States, has been trying to walk in solidarity with our sisters and brothers here in Honduras, who had been on the receiving end of these brutal soldiers with Battalion 3-16 and of course the two key players in this — the head of the air force, the head of the army, as expected, were graduates of the School of the Americas. Really this School has caused untold suffering and death in Honduras and throughout Latin America. And we are here really to say to the people of Honduras, that there are people in the United States — or in “the empire” as they often refer to us, and as we have been in the past in relation to Honduras and other countries — we are here representing many in the United States who are saying, “We are with you in your struggle for democracy, for sovereignty, for self-determination.”

AMYGOODMAN: Father Roy Bourgeois, you have been in Honduras protesting the current regime during this two year period.

FATHERROYBOURGEOIS: Yes, we came just a few days after the coup to meet with the resistance and what we found was very frightening. A lot of fear. The military took hold. They have killed really hundreds, teachers, especially the campesinos, the landless farmers, human rights activists, journalists among them. They do these acts of torture in disappearing and killing with impunity. We came back just last month actually to demonstrate once again, to meet with our counterparts, and our friends here to get updated, and we were shocked to see the intensity of the repression. And the fear is still here. But we also before leaving went before our US Embassy here in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to say that we are from the United States, representing many in our country and we are asking for the United States to stand in solidarity with President Zelaya, to be on the side of democracy and self-determination.

AMYGOODMAN: It’s very interesting that with the release of WikiLeaks of US government cables, among those cables was a cable that was sent by the US Ambassador to Honduras in July 24th, 2009. It was sent by Ambassador Hugo Llorens; the subject: Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup. And it said there was no doubt that the events of June 28th constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup. The Embassy described it as an “abduction”, a “kidnapping”. At first, President Obama did call this a coup, but then the US government seemed to back off, although the US joined in a UN General Assembly vote, with the first ever universal condemnation of a coup in a vote in the UN General Assembly. The OAS (Organization of American States) expelled Honduras for this illegal act. The United States did not fully sanction Honduras, in fact continued a relationship with Honduras, and many feel that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was working behind the scenes, and in front of the scenes, to restore Honduras to the Organization of American States. Clearly this has now been the motivation: Honduras’s readmission to the Organization of American States, the OAS, for this accord. President Porfirio Lobo wants Honduras in the OAS and right now, right now this is extremely significant, what is taking place.

I was just speaking to Ecuador’s ambassador to Venezuela who will be on this historic flight as well from Managua to Tegucigalpa today. He said, his name, Ramon Torres Galarza, that this is an historic moment. He said it’s also very important as this was worked out by Latin American countries together. This is a Latin American moment, he said. He said Latin America, especially he was addressing this to President Obama, he said Latin America is not just a market, it is a continent, it is a culture, he said we are peoples, we are societies, with dreams. Throughout Latin America there is tremendous excitement right now as there is in Honduras for this return. People are hoping this will be the return of democracy to Honduras but we will see.

We now await the flight as people gather from all over. When we arrived last night from the United States we met at the airport one of the exiles who had left Honduras four months after the coup. It was too dangerous to stay. He has been in Spain for the last 20 months, and he has returned. People are gathering here, extremely excited about this flight, about what they’re hoping is a return to democracy in Honduras.

]]>
Mon, 30 May 2011 12:32:00 -0400AUDIO: "A Return to Democracy in Honduras?" Amy Goodman Reports on Zelaya's Return to Honduras Amy Goodman files her first audio report from Nicaragua on ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya&#8217;s historic return home. She filed this report from the airport in Managua where she interviewed Father Roy Bourgeois of SOA Watch.
FOR LATEST REPORTS ON HONDURAS VISIT OUR LIVE BLOG
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN : I’m Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now! We are in Managua, Nicaragua, for an historic event: the return of ousted president Manuel Zelaya of Honduras to Honduras. Two years ago, on June 28th, 2009, he was thrown out at gunpoint. The Honduran military threw President Zelaya out of the country. Now he is returning on May 28th, 2011.
The deal that was brokered in Colombia, called the Cartagena Agreement, was witnessed by the presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and Colombia, President [Juan Manuel] Santos. The deal was worked out between ousted president Manual Zelaya and the current president of Honduras Porfirio Lobo. They have agreed on a number of points. Among them that President Zelaya and over 200 exiles can return safely home. That there will be a constitutional assembly that will be allowed to be set up. That the party that now Manuel Zelaya heads called the Resistance will be guaranteed to be able to be a legal political party. And that a Secretariat for Justice and Human Rights will be set up to deal with the terrible human rights situation in Honduras.
President Zelaya will soon be boarding the flight for the short trip between Managua and Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. Democracy Now! will be the only American media organization on that flight. Among those who are going to be on that flight are Father Roy Bourgeois, long time head of the School of the Americas Watch. He founded the School of the Americas Watch. He’s joining me right here in Managua to talk about the significance of the fact that the Honduran military, the chief of staff of which, General Vázquez Velázquez, was trained at the School of Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, which is why Father Roy Bourgeois is here to attend this moment.
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : In the endless struggle for democracy, for justice and peace in the Americas, there come along every now and then, special moments, historic moments, this is one of them. The School of Americas Watch really is honored and humbled to be invited to return with the democratically elected president Zelaya who was forcibly kicked out of the country. We’re honored because really the SOA Watch movement, made up of thousands in the United States, has been trying to walk in solidarity with our sisters and brothers here in Honduras, who had been on the receiving end of these brutal soldiers with Battalion 3-16 and of course the two key players in this &mdash; the head of the air force, the head of the army, as expected, were graduates of the School of the Americas. Really this School has caused untold suffering and death in Honduras and throughout Latin America. And we are here really to say to the people of Honduras, that there are people in the United States &mdash; or in “the empire” as they often refer to us, and as we have been in the past in relation to Honduras and other countries &mdash; we are here representing many in the United States who are saying, “We are with you in your struggle for democracy, for sovereignty, for self-determination.”
AMY GOODMAN : Father Roy Bourgeois, you have been in Honduras protesting the current regime during this two year period.
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : Yes, we came just a few days after the coup to meet with the resistance and what we found was very frightening. A lot of fear. The military took hold. They have killed really hundreds, teachers, especially the campesinos, the landless farmers, human rights activists, journalists among them. They do these acts of torture in disappearing and killing with impunity. We came back just last month actually to demonstrate once again, to meet with our counterparts, and our friends here to get updated, and we were shocked to see the intensity of the repression. And the fear is still here. But we also before leaving went before our US Embassy here in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to say that we are from the United States, representing many in our country and we are asking for the United States to stand in solidarity with President Zelaya, to be on the side of democracy and self-determination.
AMY GOODMAN : It’s very interesting that with the release of WikiLeaks of US government cables, among those cables was a cable that was sent by the US Ambassador to Honduras in July 24th, 2009. It was sent by Ambassador Hugo Llorens; the subject: Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup. And it said there was no doubt that the events of June 28th constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup. The Embassy described it as an “abduction”, a “kidnapping”. At first, President Obama did call this a coup, but then the US government seemed to back off, although the US joined in a UN General Assembly vote, with the first ever universal condemnation of a coup in a vote in the UN General Assembly. The OAS (Organization of American States) expelled Honduras for this illegal act. The United States did not fully sanction Honduras, in fact continued a relationship with Honduras, and many feel that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was working behind the scenes, and in front of the scenes, to restore Honduras to the Organization of American States. Clearly this has now been the motivation: Honduras’s readmission to the Organization of American States, the OAS , for this accord. President Porfirio Lobo wants Honduras in the OAS and right now, right now this is extremely significant, what is taking place.
I was just speaking to Ecuador’s ambassador to Venezuela who will be on this historic flight as well from Managua to Tegucigalpa today. He said, his name, Ramon Torres Galarza, that this is an historic moment. He said it’s also very important as this was worked out by Latin American countries together. This is a Latin American moment, he said. He said Latin America, especially he was addressing this to President Obama, he said Latin America is not just a market, it is a continent, it is a culture, he said we are peoples, we are societies, with dreams. Throughout Latin America there is tremendous excitement right now as there is in Honduras for this return. People are hoping this will be the return of democracy to Honduras but we will see.
We now await the flight as people gather from all over. When we arrived last night from the United States we met at the airport one of the exiles who had left Honduras four months after the coup. It was too dangerous to stay. He has been in Spain for the last 20 months, and he has returned. People are gathering here, extremely excited about this flight, about what they’re hoping is a return to democracy in Honduras.
I’m Amy Goodman, reporting from Managua, Nicaragua.
FOR LATEST REPORTS ON HONDURAS VISIT OUR LIVE BLOG nonadulttv-gDemocracy Now!News“Harvest of Empire”: New Book Exposes Latino History in America as Obama Campaigns for Latino Votehttp://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/25/harvest_of_empire_new_book_exposes
tag:democracynow.org,2011-05-25:en/story/bd4af7 AMY GOODMAN : Juan, your book, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America , came out in 2000. So, it&#8217;s 2011. You have completely revised it. Why put it out again?
JUAN GONZALEZ : Well, first of all, it has continued to be adopted by many colleges across the country in college courses, and my publisher felt that a lot of the data had sort of gotten outdated in terms of some of the studies that I had been citing. But I also think that the main reason is that the Latino presence in America continues to grow at an astounding level, and most Americans still feel remarkably insecure and lack knowledge as to why this is happening. And you can see it by all the right-wing shows that are constantly stoking anti-immigrant fervor against undocumented immigrants in the country.
And I think &mdash; I felt that it was necessary not only to update the figures, but to re-emphasize the enormous transformation that is occurring in the United States, that, for instance, the Census Bureau now projects that before 2050 one out of every three people living in the United States will be of Latino origin. And if the current trends continue, it is entirely possible that by the end of this century, by 2100, half of the entire population of the United States will trace its origins not to Europe, but to Latin America. This is an enormous transformation, when you consider that there were only a few million Latinos in the 1970s, representing about four percent of the population, and now you&#8217;re talking about, by 2100, more than 50 percent of the entire nation.
And of course, this is not just happening in the United States. The reality is that there&#8217;s been an enormous transformation of the advanced countries of the world since World War II as the third world has come to the West. England doesn&#8217;t know what to do about all the Indians, the Pakistanis and the Jamaicans. France doesn&#8217;t know what to do about all the Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans. Germany doesn&#8217;t know what to do about all the Turks. The peoples of the colonial countries have come to the West since World War II, and they are transforming the very compositions of these nations, raising all kinds of questions about language and religion and culture. And in the United States, it&#8217;s largely been the Latin Americans. As I show, between 1960 and 2008, more than 44 million people migrated to the United States, whether legally or illegally, and half of them were from Latin America, so that really the thrust of the immigration situation in the United States and the growth area is among the Latinos of the southern half of the hemisphere.
AMY GOODMAN : Juan, a documentary about Harvest of Empire is in the works right now. It won&#8217;t be completed for a number of months. But I wanted to play a few of the rough cuts from the film. This is the indigenous Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for helping to publicize the plight of Guatemala&#8217;s indigenous people under the brutal U.S.-backed government.
RIGOBERTA MENCHÚ: [translated] Guatemala was unbelievable. Two hundred thousand dead that we have accounted for, 50,000 disappeared. Eighty-three percent of the disappeared and executed were Mayas. I left Guatemala after they burned my father alive in the embassy of Spain. They were asking for political asylum from the Spanish government. They were trying to save their lives by entering the embassy. But at that moment the Guatemalan security forces attacked the embassy. They burned everyone alive. No one survived &mdash; not the students, no one who was there. Is it possible that we can be safe from genocide? Can it be that we will not be victims of genocide tomorrow? I do not have any guarantees. If what exists in Guatemala is persecution, murder, killing, if what you have is insecurity, then I prefer to cross the border and go to a place with more security.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Rigoberta Menchu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, from the forthcoming documentary, Harvest of Empire . Father Roy Bourgeois is also interviewed in the documentary, who is the founder of the group School of the Americas Watch, speaking about El Salvador in the 1980s.
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : I had never seen anything like El Salvador. I was more frightened there than Vietnam. I mean, I had never seen such brutality of a military toward their people. The death squads were running wild. What was going on there was the slaughter of the innocents. It was genocide.
JUAN GONZALEZ : It was a war that was fought everywhere.
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : Anyone against U.S. foreign policy or talking about land reform, they were labeled subversive, el enemigo , the enemy.
AMY GOODMAN : That was Father Roy Bourgeois. This is a film that&#8217;s being made based on Harvest of Empire , just a very rough cut. How this fits into immigration, Juan?
JUAN GONZALEZ : Well, I think the central theme of my book is that the &mdash; you cannot understand the enormous Latino presence in the United States unless you understand America&#8217;s role in Latin America, and in fact that the Latino presence in the country is the harvest of the empire. It is the result of more than a century of domination of many of these countries. And in fact, those countries that were most dominated by the United States are the ones that have sent the most migrants to this country. And Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Salvador, Guatemala, these are the countries that have provided the bulk of the migration from Latin America, largely many of them fleeing from the civil wars, as in the cases of Guatemala and Nicaragua and El Salvador, in which the United States government played a key role in backing one side or the other, others coming here as a result of the needs of American businesses that established migration and recruiting, actually recruited people to come here to fill jobs &mdash; that&#8217;s more so in the case of the Puerto Ricans and the Mexicans. And so, in essence, the migration flows, the mass migration flows of Latin Americans to this country were a direct response to the needs of the empire. Most Americans are not aware of that, because most Americans don&#8217;t even think of our country as an empire.
But I think that what I&#8217;ve tried to do in the book is chart how each of the different Latino groups came, what was happening in their country that forced them to leave, how did &mdash; what cities did they first arrive in, how did they establish their communities, what kind of hostility or welcome did they meet when they arrived in these various cities around the country, and basically tried to sort of like paint a picture, the human picture, of how it was that this country is now facing this enormous explosion of Latino population.
AMY GOODMAN : We played the clip of Rigoberta Menchú and the images of the burning of the Spanish embassy in 1980. Explain its significance and how it fits into this larger picture.
JUAN GONZALEZ : Well, I mean, as we have said often on Democracy Now! , the United States played a key role in all of the political events that happened in Guatemala going back to 1954, when the CIA , through Operation Success, basically organized the overthrow of a democratically elected government, the Arbenz government, and that led to a civil war that lasted &mdash;- the worst civil war in Latin America&#8217;s history. And in the process, some people at one point tried to occupy the Spanish embassy. And the Guatemalan, the right-wing Guatemalan government attacked the embassy, burned it down, and killed many of the people inside, including relatives of Rigoberta Menchú. And -&mdash;
AMY GOODMAN : Her father was killed.
JUAN GONZALEZ : Yes, her father was killed there. And so, you had this enormous ferment, a lot of it in response to U.S. government policies. In fact, it&#8217;s only recently that the new popular government of Guatemala has actually apologized to the Arbenz family and agreed to pay compensation to the family. And it was only a few years ago that President Clinton himself finally acknowledged the genocide that had occurred in Guatemala of the Mayans. So that you have this long history that most Americans are not aware of. But when you ask, &quot;Well, why are all those Guatemalans working in chicken plants in North Carolina or in other parts of the country?&quot; or, &quot;Why is there such a huge Guatemalan population in Houston, Texas?&quot; it really was the people fleeing those civil wars that basically established those communities and sought refuge in the United States from the very policies that the United States government was behind. And so, you know, I try to sort of chart that in the book and show how now basically, though you have these migrants who are here in the United States, are really the main sustenance, economic sustenance, of many of their countries through the remittances they send each month or each week back to maintain members of their families back home.
AMY GOODMAN : The significance of the protests of this month, May, several years ago here in the United States, the largest ever?
JUAN GONZALEZ : Right. Well, as I&#8217;ve said repeatedly, I believe they are the largest series of mass protests in the history of the United States. Between March and May of 2006, between three and five million people poured out into the streets of 160 cities across the country, demanding sort of an end to the demonization of immigrants, of undocumented immigrants, and some sort of path to citizenship or legality in the country. And it was subsequent to that that massive crackdowns occurred in the Bush administration &mdash; factory raids, mass deportations. And they have continued under the Obama administration, massive deportations of Latin Americans &mdash; very similar, I have to point out, as I do in the book, to mass deportations that occurred in the &#8217;50s against Mexicans, Operation Wetback, to mass deportations that occurred in the &#8217;30s under President Hoover, when more than a million Mexicans were rounded up, put on trains, and shipped back to Mexico &mdash; so that this is really the latest of a series of anti-immigrant raids or mass deportation programs that have occurred throughout U.S. history.
AMY GOODMAN : Deportations have escalated under President Obama.
JUAN GONZALEZ : Yes, they&#8217;ve increased under President Obama. Now, there&#8217;s not as many factory raids under President Obama, workplace raids, as there were under President Bush, but many more community raids of individual communities, in search of supposed felon immigrants, but really rounding up all kinds of people and getting them removed from the country.
AMY GOODMAN : The most important overlooked contributions of Latinos in this country, Juan?
JUAN GONZALEZ : Well, I think that the &mdash; I attempt to document the enormous contributions that people are not aware of, the early contributions, because Latinos are not only some of the newest immigrants, they&#8217;re some of the oldest residents of the country, if you go to South Texas or northern New Mexico, southern Colorado, where Mexicans go back long before those territories became part of the United States. You&#8217;ll remember, the entire Southwest was originally Mexican territory and provided enormous wealth to the country. The gold and silver mining industry of California and Nevada, the sheepherding industry of New Mexico, the copper industry of Arizona, and the entire cattle industry of the United States had its origins in Texas, in South Texas. These were all Mexican territories. Much of the labor was Mexican labor that produced these industries. So there&#8217;s an enormous contribution to the wealth and prosperity that can be traced back to Latinos of the United States.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, Juan, I&#8217;m glad you&#8217;re with us tomorrow co-hosting, because...part two. Juan Gonzalez&#8217;s book, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America , extremely fascinating look at the history of this country. AMYGOODMAN: Juan, your book, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, came out in 2000. So, it’s 2011. You have completely revised it. Why put it out again?

JUANGONZALEZ: Well, first of all, it has continued to be adopted by many colleges across the country in college courses, and my publisher felt that a lot of the data had sort of gotten outdated in terms of some of the studies that I had been citing. But I also think that the main reason is that the Latino presence in America continues to grow at an astounding level, and most Americans still feel remarkably insecure and lack knowledge as to why this is happening. And you can see it by all the right-wing shows that are constantly stoking anti-immigrant fervor against undocumented immigrants in the country.

And I think — I felt that it was necessary not only to update the figures, but to re-emphasize the enormous transformation that is occurring in the United States, that, for instance, the Census Bureau now projects that before 2050 one out of every three people living in the United States will be of Latino origin. And if the current trends continue, it is entirely possible that by the end of this century, by 2100, half of the entire population of the United States will trace its origins not to Europe, but to Latin America. This is an enormous transformation, when you consider that there were only a few million Latinos in the 1970s, representing about four percent of the population, and now you’re talking about, by 2100, more than 50 percent of the entire nation.

And of course, this is not just happening in the United States. The reality is that there’s been an enormous transformation of the advanced countries of the world since World War II as the third world has come to the West. England doesn’t know what to do about all the Indians, the Pakistanis and the Jamaicans. France doesn’t know what to do about all the Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans. Germany doesn’t know what to do about all the Turks. The peoples of the colonial countries have come to the West since World War II, and they are transforming the very compositions of these nations, raising all kinds of questions about language and religion and culture. And in the United States, it’s largely been the Latin Americans. As I show, between 1960 and 2008, more than 44 million people migrated to the United States, whether legally or illegally, and half of them were from Latin America, so that really the thrust of the immigration situation in the United States and the growth area is among the Latinos of the southern half of the hemisphere.

AMYGOODMAN: Juan, a documentary about Harvest of Empire is in the works right now. It won’t be completed for a number of months. But I wanted to play a few of the rough cuts from the film. This is the indigenous Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for helping to publicize the plight of Guatemala’s indigenous people under the brutal U.S.-backed government.

RIGOBERTA MENCHÚ: [translated] Guatemala was unbelievable. Two hundred thousand dead that we have accounted for, 50,000 disappeared. Eighty-three percent of the disappeared and executed were Mayas. I left Guatemala after they burned my father alive in the embassy of Spain. They were asking for political asylum from the Spanish government. They were trying to save their lives by entering the embassy. But at that moment the Guatemalan security forces attacked the embassy. They burned everyone alive. No one survived — not the students, no one who was there. Is it possible that we can be safe from genocide? Can it be that we will not be victims of genocide tomorrow? I do not have any guarantees. If what exists in Guatemala is persecution, murder, killing, if what you have is insecurity, then I prefer to cross the border and go to a place with more security.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Rigoberta Menchu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, from the forthcoming documentary, Harvest of Empire. Father Roy Bourgeois is also interviewed in the documentary, who is the founder of the group School of the Americas Watch, speaking about El Salvador in the 1980s.

FATHERROYBOURGEOIS: I had never seen anything like El Salvador. I was more frightened there than Vietnam. I mean, I had never seen such brutality of a military toward their people. The death squads were running wild. What was going on there was the slaughter of the innocents. It was genocide.

JUANGONZALEZ: It was a war that was fought everywhere.

FATHERROYBOURGEOIS: Anyone against U.S. foreign policy or talking about land reform, they were labeled subversive, el enemigo, the enemy.

AMYGOODMAN: That was Father Roy Bourgeois. This is a film that’s being made based on Harvest of Empire, just a very rough cut. How this fits into immigration, Juan?

JUANGONZALEZ: Well, I think the central theme of my book is that the — you cannot understand the enormous Latino presence in the United States unless you understand America’s role in Latin America, and in fact that the Latino presence in the country is the harvest of the empire. It is the result of more than a century of domination of many of these countries. And in fact, those countries that were most dominated by the United States are the ones that have sent the most migrants to this country. And Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Salvador, Guatemala, these are the countries that have provided the bulk of the migration from Latin America, largely many of them fleeing from the civil wars, as in the cases of Guatemala and Nicaragua and El Salvador, in which the United States government played a key role in backing one side or the other, others coming here as a result of the needs of American businesses that established migration and recruiting, actually recruited people to come here to fill jobs — that’s more so in the case of the Puerto Ricans and the Mexicans. And so, in essence, the migration flows, the mass migration flows of Latin Americans to this country were a direct response to the needs of the empire. Most Americans are not aware of that, because most Americans don’t even think of our country as an empire.

But I think that what I’ve tried to do in the book is chart how each of the different Latino groups came, what was happening in their country that forced them to leave, how did — what cities did they first arrive in, how did they establish their communities, what kind of hostility or welcome did they meet when they arrived in these various cities around the country, and basically tried to sort of like paint a picture, the human picture, of how it was that this country is now facing this enormous explosion of Latino population.

AMYGOODMAN: We played the clip of Rigoberta Menchú and the images of the burning of the Spanish embassy in 1980. Explain its significance and how it fits into this larger picture.

JUANGONZALEZ: Well, I mean, as we have said often on Democracy Now!, the United States played a key role in all of the political events that happened in Guatemala going back to 1954, when the CIA, through Operation Success, basically organized the overthrow of a democratically elected government, the Arbenz government, and that led to a civil war that lasted —- the worst civil war in Latin America’s history. And in the process, some people at one point tried to occupy the Spanish embassy. And the Guatemalan, the right-wing Guatemalan government attacked the embassy, burned it down, and killed many of the people inside, including relatives of Rigoberta Menchú. And -—

AMYGOODMAN: Her father was killed.

JUANGONZALEZ: Yes, her father was killed there. And so, you had this enormous ferment, a lot of it in response to U.S. government policies. In fact, it’s only recently that the new popular government of Guatemala has actually apologized to the Arbenz family and agreed to pay compensation to the family. And it was only a few years ago that President Clinton himself finally acknowledged the genocide that had occurred in Guatemala of the Mayans. So that you have this long history that most Americans are not aware of. But when you ask, "Well, why are all those Guatemalans working in chicken plants in North Carolina or in other parts of the country?" or, "Why is there such a huge Guatemalan population in Houston, Texas?" it really was the people fleeing those civil wars that basically established those communities and sought refuge in the United States from the very policies that the United States government was behind. And so, you know, I try to sort of chart that in the book and show how now basically, though you have these migrants who are here in the United States, are really the main sustenance, economic sustenance, of many of their countries through the remittances they send each month or each week back to maintain members of their families back home.

AMYGOODMAN: The significance of the protests of this month, May, several years ago here in the United States, the largest ever?

JUANGONZALEZ: Right. Well, as I’ve said repeatedly, I believe they are the largest series of mass protests in the history of the United States. Between March and May of 2006, between three and five million people poured out into the streets of 160 cities across the country, demanding sort of an end to the demonization of immigrants, of undocumented immigrants, and some sort of path to citizenship or legality in the country. And it was subsequent to that that massive crackdowns occurred in the Bush administration — factory raids, mass deportations. And they have continued under the Obama administration, massive deportations of Latin Americans — very similar, I have to point out, as I do in the book, to mass deportations that occurred in the ’50s against Mexicans, Operation Wetback, to mass deportations that occurred in the ’30s under President Hoover, when more than a million Mexicans were rounded up, put on trains, and shipped back to Mexico — so that this is really the latest of a series of anti-immigrant raids or mass deportation programs that have occurred throughout U.S. history.

AMYGOODMAN: Deportations have escalated under President Obama.

JUANGONZALEZ: Yes, they’ve increased under President Obama. Now, there’s not as many factory raids under President Obama, workplace raids, as there were under President Bush, but many more community raids of individual communities, in search of supposed felon immigrants, but really rounding up all kinds of people and getting them removed from the country.

AMYGOODMAN: The most important overlooked contributions of Latinos in this country, Juan?

JUANGONZALEZ: Well, I think that the — I attempt to document the enormous contributions that people are not aware of, the early contributions, because Latinos are not only some of the newest immigrants, they’re some of the oldest residents of the country, if you go to South Texas or northern New Mexico, southern Colorado, where Mexicans go back long before those territories became part of the United States. You’ll remember, the entire Southwest was originally Mexican territory and provided enormous wealth to the country. The gold and silver mining industry of California and Nevada, the sheepherding industry of New Mexico, the copper industry of Arizona, and the entire cattle industry of the United States had its origins in Texas, in South Texas. These were all Mexican territories. Much of the labor was Mexican labor that produced these industries. So there’s an enormous contribution to the wealth and prosperity that can be traced back to Latinos of the United States.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, Juan, I’m glad you’re with us tomorrow co-hosting, because...part two. Juan Gonzalez’s book, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, extremely fascinating look at the history of this country.

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Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400Zelaya to Leave Honduras as Coup Leaders Clearedhttp://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/27/honduras
tag:democracynow.org,2010-01-27:en/story/e254e9 AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re in Park City, Utah at the Sundance Film Festival headquarters. In our next segment we’ll be talking about a new film and also how it relates to the issues of today &mdash; it’s called Casino Jack [and] the United States of Money &mdash; and looking at the Supreme Court decision that opens the floodgates for corporate money in politics.
But right now we’re going to Honduras. Ousted president Manuel Zelaya is due to leave the country today after the President-elect Porfirio Lobo is sworn into office. Zelaya has taken refuge in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa since returning to Honduras in September.
Lobo was elected last November in a race boycotted by Zelaya supporters. Zelaya plans to travel to the Dominican Republic today under the terms of an agreement signed by Lobo and the Dominican President Leonel Fernández. Zelaya still faces treason and abuse-of-power charges, although Lobo has indicated he supports granting him amnesty.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Supreme Court in Honduras dismissed all charges against six military commanders involved in the June 28th coup that removed Zelaya from office. The head of the armed forces, General Romeo Vásquez, air force chief General Javier Prince, and the navy commander General Juan Pablo Rodríguez were among the officers being prosecuted. They were accused of abuse of power for ordering soldiers to storm into Zelaya&#8217;s house, arrest him, and fly him to Costa Rica at gunpoint. Supreme Court President Jorge Rivera said in a statement that, quote, &quot;prosecutors failed to prove the military chiefs acted with malice.&quot;
For more, we go right now inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where Manuel Zelaya has been holed up for the last four months since returning to Honduras. We’re joined by Democracy Now! audio stream by Andrés Conteris, Program on the Americas director for Nonviolence International and works with Democracy Now! en Español . He has been with President Zelaya for that four months inside the embassy.
Tell us what’s happening there right now. Is the President, Zelaya, preparing to leave? What’s going on inside the embassy, and how was this deal negotiated, Andrés?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : Yes, Amy, President Zelaya is in fact preparing to leave today. This accord was negotiated between Pepe Lobo, the incoming president, and President Leonel Fernández from the Dominican Republic. President Zelaya is in agreement with that accord that was reached. He said that it expressed goodwill on part of the incoming president, Porfirio Lobo. And it means that the President will finally leave the embassy today, after 129 days. He will have a safe conduct passage from the embassy to the airport, and from there the President Leonel Fernández will accompany him to the Dominican Republic.
AMY GOODMAN : What are the guarantees that have been made to, well, President Manuel Zelaya? And what happens to everyone inside the Brazilian embassy, including you, Andrés? You’ve been there now for 129 days.
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : The guarantees that have been offered to President Zelaya include the fact that when the actual inauguration takes place, the very first act, I believe, of Porfirio Lobo will be to sign the order allowing safe passage. There are some right-wingers in the Congress who have protested this, saying that there is no treaty that should allow a safe passage for someone who has criminal violations. And the amnesty will in fact cover President Zelaya; however, it is not yet a law. So President Zelaya is counting on the international community’s support, with the accompaniment of the president from the Dominican Republic and the fact that he is agreeing to leave the country, which will leave Porfirio Lobo with a brand new start for his government.
In terms of those of us in the embassy, it has been quite an ordeal. The very first morning that we were here, on September 22nd, we were greeted with a very severe attack of tear gas, which was directed toward the thousands of protesters in the streets. In fact, one woman, Wendy Avila, was killed as a result of that tear gas attack. And those of us here in the embassy could feel it very, very strong. The treatment by the both military and the police during these last four months has involved basically psychological warfare operations against us. Very loud shrieking noises have been used as weapons against us, as well as lamps, very strong lights during the nighttime. Also interfering with our communications. We have a photograph of a birthday cake that was bayoneted as a symbol to us, those inside the embassy here. So those kinds of messages have been loud and clear by the coup regime, and it will be really a big relief for myself, as well as for my six other colleagues &mdash; there are seven of us who are accompanying both President Zelaya and his wife, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya.
AMY GOODMAN : Can you talk about the Honduran Supreme Court decision?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : The Supreme Court made a decision to basically throw out the charges against the military high command. The military high command was charged with a very low-level crime, which is violating Article 102 of the Constitution, which says that no Honduran citizen can in fact be expatriated. They cannot be forced into exile. And so, this minor criminal charge was brought against all of the military high command as a symbolic gesture so that they could benefit from the amnesty, because if they’re not officially charged, they would not benefit from the amnesty, for one.
But even though amnesty was adopted, the Supreme Court&#8217;s decision yesterday was totally in line with their complicity all along with the coup itself, because they ratified the coup very shortly after June 28th, the day of it, the day of the coup itself. And now this throwing out of the charges against the military high command once again shows that they are perpetrators, as well.
AMY GOODMAN : Can you talk, Andrés Conteris, about the background of the military officers who were responsible for ousting President Zelaya?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : The chief general, whose name is Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, he is someone who has been known to be involved in repression, and he is trained at the School of the Americas, this infamous institution that has trained coup leaders throughout the Americas, torturers, those who are most well known for their repressive histories. And Romeo Vásquez Velásquez is no exception whatsoever.
Under his repressive rule during the coup and in the months afterwards, human rights violations have just skyrocketed. President Zelaya has documented the attacks against 4,000 people in some form or other of a human rights violation. This includes political prisoners. It includes rapes. It includes torture, disappearance, and it includes the murder and assassination of nonviolent supporters of the resistance. So this military, which is really the power behind the throne, is very, very much responsible for the coup itself, as well as for the repression that has followed.
And we have to point out the US involvement in this, because the Southern Command of the US Pentagon is very much close to the Honduran military, given that they trained the key leader, as well as the chief of the Air Force, General Prince. He was also trained at the School of the Americas. So the training of these coup leaders creates the relationship for the complicity, for the United States Pentagon to be very closely associated with the Honduran military.
This was shown in some military exercises that took place off the coast of Panama in these exercises called PANAMAX . Honduras was initially invited; however, they were not disinvited after the coup, even though the State Department was saying that military relations were cut with Honduras. So that invitation remained as a sign that the US continued with military relations. They also continued training soldiers at the School of the Americas, which is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, even though, as I say, the State Department said that military ties were cut with Honduras after the coup.
AMY GOODMAN : The US delegation that is going to celebrate the inauguration of President Lobo, who are they and what’s their relationship with Manuel Zelaya?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : The head of the delegation from the United States is the Assistant Secretary Valenzuela. This man was &mdash; his confirmation was held up in the US Senate by Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina. Why was his confirmation set up? Because the United States policy under the Obama administration had not come out saying that it would support the election of whoever would be elected on November the 29th, whether or not President Zelaya was restored to power.
When this took place, when the US declared itself in favor of the elections, whether or not President Zelaya would be restored to power, this was a complete act of sabotage of the accord that was signed between the United States and &mdash; I&#8217;m sorry, between the coup regime headed by Roberto Micheletti and President Zelaya and his negotiating team. That accord was signed on October the 30th. And very immediately after it was signed, the predecessor of Arturo Valenzuela, who was Thomas Shannon, he returned to Washington. He had an interview on CNN , and on that interview is when he said that the US would, in fact, accept the results of the sham election, which is what President Zelaya calls it, in spite of the fact that the President would not be restored.
And so, the spirit of the accord included the return of President Zelaya to power, which means a return to democracy. It means returning President Zelaya as the elected leader of this country by the majority of the people four years ago. And the US complicity in subverting the accord shows also their complicity in the coup itself and in the repression that has followed.
AMY GOODMAN : There will be a very interesting picture today, Andrés, of Manuel Zelaya being escorted to the airport &mdash; is this right? &mdash; by, well, who will be the President, Lobo.
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : Yes, that is right. We do know, in fact, that President Leonel Fernández from the Dominican Republic and President Colom from Guatemala will come here to the embassy. This is the plan. We don&#8217;t know exactly if President-elect Lobo, soon to be inaugurated as president, will in fact come to the embassy and escort President Zelaya to the airport. That is yet to be seen. But you are absolutely right, that would be a very interesting picture.
And we have to note the involvement of the resistance. This nonviolent resistance that was born on June the 28th has grown incredibly, with daily protests for many, many months until the election. They were in the streets. They faced severe repression. They continued to be creative with their artistic expression and with showing that they believed in democracy and they were willing to put their lives on the line. The resistance today will be at the airport to bid farewell to their president, Manuel Zelaya Rosales. And that will be the picture that will be most important to show around the world, that this democratic movement that has survived the repression, in spite of the coup and in spite of US policy, they are alive and well, and they are growing. They are the ones who are asking for a new constitution that will respond to the needs of the people and not to the military, economic and political elite of this country, which currently benefits from the Constitution that exists.
AMY GOODMAN : And the human rights record in Honduras during the time that President Zelaya was ousted?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : Yes, it’s very clear that the repression escalated enormously after June 28th coup. President Zelaya clearly stated there were over 4,000 human rights violations. These included 3,000 illegal detentions, 114 political prisoners. It included 130 killings. That is outright political assassinations. And many of those bodies were tortured, decapitated. And they included Wendy Avila, who was killed right here outside the embassy as a result of the tear gas attack, and over 450 wounded and hospitalized.
We also have to point out the rapes. The political-motivated rape of women has also been a very severe form of the repression caused by the coup regime.
Also the attacks against the Afro Caribbean people, the Garifuna people. They have faced decades of repression by the economic elite and military elite of this country, and recently they suffered an attack on their community radio station. It’s called Sweet Coconut. It’s located up in Triunfo de la Cruz on the coast of Honduras. And these Garifuna people are part of the nonviolent resistance that will be going to the airport today to bid farewell to President Zelaya.
AMY GOODMAN : Where will President Zelaya live? He’s going to the Dominican Republic, but where will he then reside? And he &mdash; can he ever run for president again in Honduras?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : The plans of President Zelaya are, after he leaves Honduras, he will be either a few days or up to a week or, at most, a few weeks in the Dominican Republic, but then his plan is to go to Mexico. He will reside in Mexico for as long as the foreseeable future.
But his intent is to return to Honduras, not to run again as president, because that is barred in the Constitution, but he wants to continue to be a political leader of the people and of the resistance movement that has been born as a result of this coup. And President Zelaya has clearly declared his allegiance to the people and to the process toward a constituent assembly.
AMY GOODMAN : Andrés Conteris, finally, you and the others, how many are there outside of President and Mrs. Zelaya? And can you just walk outside the embassy once he has left, the Brazilian embassy, where you, too, have been holed up for four months?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : On the 28th of &mdash; I&#8217;m sorry, on the 21st of September was the day that President Zelaya arrived here to the embassy. And there were over 300 people who spent the night that night, and the next morning was the very repressive morning with the tear gas attack and the shrieking, shrill noise. And then, slowly, over time, these hundreds of people have left the embassy. There are now only seven of us who are accompanying the First Lady Xiomara and President Zelaya. So there are nine of us here in total.
Our plans are to leave the embassy. Some of those who have left over the past few months have faced political charges, we believe, because they have deep &mdash; dug deep into their records and found practically expired warrants. So there have been those who have been interrogated by the police after leaving the embassy. Some of us who are left, the seven of us, may face that, as well. But basically, there will be a lot of attention on us, as well, so it’s very likely that any repression against the Hondurans who have remained this long will not happen today, but it could happen very much in the weeks and months to come.
AMY GOODMAN : Andrés Thomas Conteris, thank you very much for being with us, speaking to us from inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucagulpa, perhaps for the last time, as he heads out, as well. President Zelaya will be leaving Honduras today &mdash; that’s the plan &mdash; going to the airport and flying to the Dominican Republic, as the new president, which Zelaya supporters boycotted, didn’t participate in the election in November, is escorted to the airport.
This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Best of luck, Andrés.AMYGOODMAN: We’re in Park City, Utah at the Sundance Film Festival headquarters. In our next segment we’ll be talking about a new film and also how it relates to the issues of today — it’s called Casino Jack [and] the United States of Money — and looking at the Supreme Court decision that opens the floodgates for corporate money in politics.

But right now we’re going to Honduras. Ousted president Manuel Zelaya is due to leave the country today after the President-elect Porfirio Lobo is sworn into office. Zelaya has taken refuge in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa since returning to Honduras in September.

Lobo was elected last November in a race boycotted by Zelaya supporters. Zelaya plans to travel to the Dominican Republic today under the terms of an agreement signed by Lobo and the Dominican President Leonel Fernández. Zelaya still faces treason and abuse-of-power charges, although Lobo has indicated he supports granting him amnesty.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Supreme Court in Honduras dismissed all charges against six military commanders involved in the June 28th coup that removed Zelaya from office. The head of the armed forces, General Romeo Vásquez, air force chief General Javier Prince, and the navy commander General Juan Pablo Rodríguez were among the officers being prosecuted. They were accused of abuse of power for ordering soldiers to storm into Zelaya’s house, arrest him, and fly him to Costa Rica at gunpoint. Supreme Court President Jorge Rivera said in a statement that, quote, "prosecutors failed to prove the military chiefs acted with malice."

For more, we go right now inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where Manuel Zelaya has been holed up for the last four months since returning to Honduras. We’re joined by Democracy Now! audio stream by Andrés Conteris, Program on the Americas director for Nonviolence International and works with Democracy Now! en Español. He has been with President Zelaya for that four months inside the embassy.

Tell us what’s happening there right now. Is the President, Zelaya, preparing to leave? What’s going on inside the embassy, and how was this deal negotiated, Andrés?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: Yes, Amy, President Zelaya is in fact preparing to leave today. This accord was negotiated between Pepe Lobo, the incoming president, and President Leonel Fernández from the Dominican Republic. President Zelaya is in agreement with that accord that was reached. He said that it expressed goodwill on part of the incoming president, Porfirio Lobo. And it means that the President will finally leave the embassy today, after 129 days. He will have a safe conduct passage from the embassy to the airport, and from there the President Leonel Fernández will accompany him to the Dominican Republic.

AMYGOODMAN: What are the guarantees that have been made to, well, President Manuel Zelaya? And what happens to everyone inside the Brazilian embassy, including you, Andrés? You’ve been there now for 129 days.

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: The guarantees that have been offered to President Zelaya include the fact that when the actual inauguration takes place, the very first act, I believe, of Porfirio Lobo will be to sign the order allowing safe passage. There are some right-wingers in the Congress who have protested this, saying that there is no treaty that should allow a safe passage for someone who has criminal violations. And the amnesty will in fact cover President Zelaya; however, it is not yet a law. So President Zelaya is counting on the international community’s support, with the accompaniment of the president from the Dominican Republic and the fact that he is agreeing to leave the country, which will leave Porfirio Lobo with a brand new start for his government.

In terms of those of us in the embassy, it has been quite an ordeal. The very first morning that we were here, on September 22nd, we were greeted with a very severe attack of tear gas, which was directed toward the thousands of protesters in the streets. In fact, one woman, Wendy Avila, was killed as a result of that tear gas attack. And those of us here in the embassy could feel it very, very strong. The treatment by the both military and the police during these last four months has involved basically psychological warfare operations against us. Very loud shrieking noises have been used as weapons against us, as well as lamps, very strong lights during the nighttime. Also interfering with our communications. We have a photograph of a birthday cake that was bayoneted as a symbol to us, those inside the embassy here. So those kinds of messages have been loud and clear by the coup regime, and it will be really a big relief for myself, as well as for my six other colleagues — there are seven of us who are accompanying both President Zelaya and his wife, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you talk about the Honduran Supreme Court decision?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: The Supreme Court made a decision to basically throw out the charges against the military high command. The military high command was charged with a very low-level crime, which is violating Article 102 of the Constitution, which says that no Honduran citizen can in fact be expatriated. They cannot be forced into exile. And so, this minor criminal charge was brought against all of the military high command as a symbolic gesture so that they could benefit from the amnesty, because if they’re not officially charged, they would not benefit from the amnesty, for one.

But even though amnesty was adopted, the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday was totally in line with their complicity all along with the coup itself, because they ratified the coup very shortly after June 28th, the day of it, the day of the coup itself. And now this throwing out of the charges against the military high command once again shows that they are perpetrators, as well.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you talk, Andrés Conteris, about the background of the military officers who were responsible for ousting President Zelaya?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: The chief general, whose name is Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, he is someone who has been known to be involved in repression, and he is trained at the School of the Americas, this infamous institution that has trained coup leaders throughout the Americas, torturers, those who are most well known for their repressive histories. And Romeo Vásquez Velásquez is no exception whatsoever.

Under his repressive rule during the coup and in the months afterwards, human rights violations have just skyrocketed. President Zelaya has documented the attacks against 4,000 people in some form or other of a human rights violation. This includes political prisoners. It includes rapes. It includes torture, disappearance, and it includes the murder and assassination of nonviolent supporters of the resistance. So this military, which is really the power behind the throne, is very, very much responsible for the coup itself, as well as for the repression that has followed.

And we have to point out the US involvement in this, because the Southern Command of the US Pentagon is very much close to the Honduran military, given that they trained the key leader, as well as the chief of the Air Force, General Prince. He was also trained at the School of the Americas. So the training of these coup leaders creates the relationship for the complicity, for the United States Pentagon to be very closely associated with the Honduran military.

This was shown in some military exercises that took place off the coast of Panama in these exercises called PANAMAX. Honduras was initially invited; however, they were not disinvited after the coup, even though the State Department was saying that military relations were cut with Honduras. So that invitation remained as a sign that the US continued with military relations. They also continued training soldiers at the School of the Americas, which is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, even though, as I say, the State Department said that military ties were cut with Honduras after the coup.

AMYGOODMAN: The US delegation that is going to celebrate the inauguration of President Lobo, who are they and what’s their relationship with Manuel Zelaya?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: The head of the delegation from the United States is the Assistant Secretary Valenzuela. This man was — his confirmation was held up in the US Senate by Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina. Why was his confirmation set up? Because the United States policy under the Obama administration had not come out saying that it would support the election of whoever would be elected on November the 29th, whether or not President Zelaya was restored to power.

When this took place, when the US declared itself in favor of the elections, whether or not President Zelaya would be restored to power, this was a complete act of sabotage of the accord that was signed between the United States and — I’m sorry, between the coup regime headed by Roberto Micheletti and President Zelaya and his negotiating team. That accord was signed on October the 30th. And very immediately after it was signed, the predecessor of Arturo Valenzuela, who was Thomas Shannon, he returned to Washington. He had an interview on CNN, and on that interview is when he said that the US would, in fact, accept the results of the sham election, which is what President Zelaya calls it, in spite of the fact that the President would not be restored.

And so, the spirit of the accord included the return of President Zelaya to power, which means a return to democracy. It means returning President Zelaya as the elected leader of this country by the majority of the people four years ago. And the US complicity in subverting the accord shows also their complicity in the coup itself and in the repression that has followed.

AMYGOODMAN: There will be a very interesting picture today, Andrés, of Manuel Zelaya being escorted to the airport — is this right? — by, well, who will be the President, Lobo.

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: Yes, that is right. We do know, in fact, that President Leonel Fernández from the Dominican Republic and President Colom from Guatemala will come here to the embassy. This is the plan. We don’t know exactly if President-elect Lobo, soon to be inaugurated as president, will in fact come to the embassy and escort President Zelaya to the airport. That is yet to be seen. But you are absolutely right, that would be a very interesting picture.

And we have to note the involvement of the resistance. This nonviolent resistance that was born on June the 28th has grown incredibly, with daily protests for many, many months until the election. They were in the streets. They faced severe repression. They continued to be creative with their artistic expression and with showing that they believed in democracy and they were willing to put their lives on the line. The resistance today will be at the airport to bid farewell to their president, Manuel Zelaya Rosales. And that will be the picture that will be most important to show around the world, that this democratic movement that has survived the repression, in spite of the coup and in spite of US policy, they are alive and well, and they are growing. They are the ones who are asking for a new constitution that will respond to the needs of the people and not to the military, economic and political elite of this country, which currently benefits from the Constitution that exists.

AMYGOODMAN: And the human rights record in Honduras during the time that President Zelaya was ousted?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: Yes, it’s very clear that the repression escalated enormously after June 28th coup. President Zelaya clearly stated there were over 4,000 human rights violations. These included 3,000 illegal detentions, 114 political prisoners. It included 130 killings. That is outright political assassinations. And many of those bodies were tortured, decapitated. And they included Wendy Avila, who was killed right here outside the embassy as a result of the tear gas attack, and over 450 wounded and hospitalized.

We also have to point out the rapes. The political-motivated rape of women has also been a very severe form of the repression caused by the coup regime.

Also the attacks against the Afro Caribbean people, the Garifuna people. They have faced decades of repression by the economic elite and military elite of this country, and recently they suffered an attack on their community radio station. It’s called Sweet Coconut. It’s located up in Triunfo de la Cruz on the coast of Honduras. And these Garifuna people are part of the nonviolent resistance that will be going to the airport today to bid farewell to President Zelaya.

AMYGOODMAN: Where will President Zelaya live? He’s going to the Dominican Republic, but where will he then reside? And he — can he ever run for president again in Honduras?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: The plans of President Zelaya are, after he leaves Honduras, he will be either a few days or up to a week or, at most, a few weeks in the Dominican Republic, but then his plan is to go to Mexico. He will reside in Mexico for as long as the foreseeable future.

But his intent is to return to Honduras, not to run again as president, because that is barred in the Constitution, but he wants to continue to be a political leader of the people and of the resistance movement that has been born as a result of this coup. And President Zelaya has clearly declared his allegiance to the people and to the process toward a constituent assembly.

AMYGOODMAN: Andrés Conteris, finally, you and the others, how many are there outside of President and Mrs. Zelaya? And can you just walk outside the embassy once he has left, the Brazilian embassy, where you, too, have been holed up for four months?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: On the 28th of — I’m sorry, on the 21st of September was the day that President Zelaya arrived here to the embassy. And there were over 300 people who spent the night that night, and the next morning was the very repressive morning with the tear gas attack and the shrieking, shrill noise. And then, slowly, over time, these hundreds of people have left the embassy. There are now only seven of us who are accompanying the First Lady Xiomara and President Zelaya. So there are nine of us here in total.

Our plans are to leave the embassy. Some of those who have left over the past few months have faced political charges, we believe, because they have deep — dug deep into their records and found practically expired warrants. So there have been those who have been interrogated by the police after leaving the embassy. Some of us who are left, the seven of us, may face that, as well. But basically, there will be a lot of attention on us, as well, so it’s very likely that any repression against the Hondurans who have remained this long will not happen today, but it could happen very much in the weeks and months to come.

AMYGOODMAN: Andrés Thomas Conteris, thank you very much for being with us, speaking to us from inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucagulpa, perhaps for the last time, as he heads out, as well. President Zelaya will be leaving Honduras today — that’s the plan — going to the airport and flying to the Dominican Republic, as the new president, which Zelaya supporters boycotted, didn’t participate in the election in November, is escorted to the airport.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Best of luck, Andrés.]]>

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500On 20th Anniversary of Killings of 6 Jesuit Priests by US-Backed Salvadoran Forces, Thousands to Protest "School of the Assassins" at Ft. Benninghttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/20/blase
tag:democracynow.org,2009-11-20:en/story/5ed7aa AMY GOODMAN : Thousands of human rights activists are gathering at Fort Benning, Georgia this weekend for the annual protest to shut down the US Army training center once known as the School of the Americas. The school, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or WHISC , is used to train Latin American soldiers in combat, counterinsurgency and counter-narcotics. Critics have dubbed the training center the &quot;School of the Assassins,&quot; because some of its graduates have been responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America.
This year&#8217;s protest will commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the murder of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador, their housekeeper and her daughter by the US-backed Salvadoran military. The Jesuit priests were killed November 16, 1989, twenty years ago this week, when a military unit entered the Central American University campus and shot them to death &mdash; the priests&#8217; housekeeper and her daughter also killed. The Jesuits had been outspoken advocates for the poor and critics of human rights abuses committed by the ARENA government. Many of the soldiers involved in the murders were graduates of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning.
Earlier this week in El Salvador, the Jesuit priests were bestowed the nation&#8217;s highest civilian award, marking the first time the Salvadoran government has honored the priests since their deaths. El Salvador&#8217;s defense minister announced the military is ready to ask for forgiveness and open its archives to a long-sought investigation. The current head of the Central American University, Father Jose Maria Tojeira, welcomed the posthumous recognition.
FATHER JOSE MARIA TOJEIRA : [translated] As a matter of fact, this is the first time in twenty years that Salvadoran states, by one of its powers, recognizes Jesuits’ dignity. Many people from all parties &mdash; of course, ARENA , as well &mdash; commented before those priests were great men who helped to end war before, because their martyrdom pushed to accelerate peace talks. But never in twenty years an official word of recognition for those people’s dignity. This is the first time, and I think it’s a very important symbol that should be opened to all victims from El Salvador.
AMY GOODMAN : To talk more about the 1989 killing of the Jesuits and the state of Latin American affairs, I’m joined here in Los Angeles by Blase Bonpane. He’s a former Maryknoll priest who serves as the director of the Office of the Americas here in Los Angeles. For more than four decades, he has worked to promote human rights in Latin America. He also hosts the show World Focus on Pacifica Radio&#8217;s KPFK here in Los Angeles and the author of many books, including Civilization Is Possible .
Welcome to Democracy Now! , Blase Bonpane.
BLASE BONPANE : Thank you, Amy. It’s good to be here.
AMY GOODMAN : Talk about the significance of this anniversary. You knew the six Jesuit priests.
BLASE BONPANE : Yes. Our last visit with them was in a labor gathering just about a year before they were killed. We all met at the university there in El Salvador, la UCA . And Father Ellacuria really was in charge of the gathering. He didn’t just welcome us to the university; he was part and parcel of chairing the entire meeting. We were heavily buzzed by the helicopters at that time, and there were a lot of threats. Febe Velasquez was killed during that week. She was head of one of the major unions in El Salvador. And we fanned out from there to the countryside and saw the particular rebel activity in the area. And that was just about a year before they were killed in 1989.
AMY GOODMAN : Talk about the chronology that year that included a series of murders.
BLASE BONPANE : Well, it goes on, actually, starting &mdash; you can start as early as 1971, when Father Ellacuria got there, and then the bombing of the university began in ’75. In ’77, there were twelve students killed, some from the university and some from the state university, and there were twenty wounded. They just opened fire on them. The bombing continued at the university of Father Ellacuria&#8217;s offices, of the library and of the high school. There&#8217;s a high school also in the area. So he was constantly under attack because of the charges of liberation theology. And if we read the torture manuals, which School of the Americas Watch uncovered, we see direct reference to theology of liberation as a subversive act, as a subversive organization on behalf of the people of El Salvador.
And then, of course, 1977, Father Rutilio Grande was killed, another Jesuit. And that was the time when Archbishop Romero said, “ Me convertí ,” “They converted me.” By that, he meant he was on &mdash; there on behalf of the poor and that he was no longer part of the oligarchic military connection, which used to be called the Holy Trinity in El Salvador. And, you know, the fact that he identified with the poorest of the poor, he became an object of threats, as well. And, of course, he was killed in 1980 on the 24th of March, and that was followed by the killing of the sisters, the four sisters, on December 2nd of 1980.
AMY GOODMAN : And for those who don&#8217;t know the history, which is not necessarily people&#8217;s fault &mdash;-
BLASE BONPANE : Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : &mdash;- since so much of the corporate media in this country whites out history &mdash;-
BLASE BONPANE : Oh, yes.
AMY GOODMAN : &mdash;- the sisters, the nuns, you&#8217;re talking about.
BLASE BONPANE : Yes. Oh, yes. They were Maryknoll sisters, an Ursuline sister and a lay sister, as well. And they were killed on December 2nd, 1980. And this continued &mdash;-
AMY GOODMAN : By who?
BLASE BONPANE : Well, they were killed really by the security forces. They were raped and killed. And that also led to the conversion of Ambassador White, who&#8217;s been speaking on behalf of the -&mdash;
AMY GOODMAN : That&#8217;s the US ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, at the time.
BLASE BONPANE : Yes. Yes, they had had dinner with him the night before, and he entered into the fray. And, of course, that was a great turning point. Joe Moakley and other Congress people got into it at that time.
And then, years later, actually &mdash; we&#8217;re talking about nine years later &mdash; the Jesuits were killed. But in between that time, tens of thousands of people were killed. The religious people have no more right to live than anyone else, and so it was every day torturing and killing.
And it is so ironic that today the Congress of the United States has a special commemoration of the Jesuits, Resolution 761. They mention them all. It reminds me of the Scriptural statement that first they kill the prophets, then they honor them. You know, and so, here they are, all mentioned: Father Ellacuria, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Segundo Montes, all of them mentioned in the congressional &mdash;-
AMY GOODMAN : Why don&#8217;t you read their names?
BLASE BONPANE : OK, the first is the rector, Ignacio Ellacuria, then his vice rector, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Segundo Montes, Amando Lopez, Juan Ramon Moreno, Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, the housekeeper Julia Elba Ramos, and her daughter Celina Mariset Ramos. And that&#8217;s the twentieth occasion of their death at the University of Central America Jose Simeon Canas, located in El Salvador.
And they talk about how the military came in and murdered them all, and then they speak about the work that each one of them did, including the housekeeper and her daughter. And then they mentioned the Jesuit colleges in the United States. And, of course, they also mention that a Salvadoran jury found guilty two Salvadoran military officers, including Colonel Guillermo Alfredo Benavides Moreno. And that was the first time in Salvadoran history when any of the military were charged.
AMY GOODMAN : Can you bring this to the present, because you have the honoring for the first time in El Salvador, you have this resolution, and you have this protest that&#8217;s taking place now?
BLASE BONPANE : Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : This is twenty years later at the School of the Americas.
BLASE BONPANE : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, now has a different name: WHISC .
BLASE BONPANE : Yes. Well, it&#8217;s important to continue that, because we&#8217;re still involved in intervention. El Salvador has had its people in the streets for over 150 days. I spoke to President Zelaya this week. They are dealing with the junta in the same fashion.
AMY GOODMAN : This is in Honduras.
BLASE BONPANE : Yeah, in Honduras. They&#8217;re dealing with the junta as if the junta has as much right to be there as the actual president. And so, the battle goes on. And President Zelaya should be reinstated. And unfortunately, we&#8217;re not giving him the support we should.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, let&#8217;s talk about that, the US role in what&#8217;s going on right now in Honduras.
BLASE BONPANE : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : The democratically elected president, Zelaya, was ousted on June 28th.
BLASE BONPANE : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : He snuck back into the country, still is holed up at the Brazilian embassy. A deal that was announced as being brokered that would return Zelaya in the last few weeks seems to have fallen apart, and now there are elections coming up. Explain what you think the United States has done and should be doing.
BLASE BONPANE : Well, at this very time, Senator DeMint made a deal with the State Department, with Hillary Clinton and others, to say, “Alright, I&#8217;ll support Tom Shannon as the ambassador to Brazil.” And he&#8217;s bragging about the fact that, as a result of that, he got their non-cooperation with the reinstatement of President Zelaya. And so, we have actually seen the open tension within the State Department at this time, and President Obama has remained on the sidelines on this one. I think he&#8217;s making a great mistake, because he said, “They&#8217;re asking me now to intervene,” as though we were asked to intervene militarily. We&#8217;re not asking that. We&#8217;re asking that the law be kept. The Organization of American States has jurisdiction to solve this problem. They decided entirely in favor of President Zelaya.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to go back for a minute. You mentioned Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina.
BLASE BONPANE : Yes, yes.
AMY GOODMAN : Explain exactly what he has done and what he has said.
BLASE BONPANE : He negotiated -&mdash;
AMY GOODMAN : He went to Honduras, is that right?
BLASE BONPANE : Yes, he did.
AMY GOODMAN : With a delegation.
BLASE BONPANE : And then he said, “Alright, I am blocking Tom Shannon from being ambassador to Brazil. And I will unblock that if you lay off the reinstatement of Zelaya.”
AMY GOODMAN : This was his message to the Obama administration.
BLASE BONPANE : Yes, and he&#8217;s bragging about it quite publicly. And so, they did. They agreed, which is very strange to me, because Obama condemned the coup. At the same time, he is not allowing the law to be kept. The law is structured through the Organization of American States and the UN, all of which have condemned the coup.
AMY GOODMAN : And I want to go back to that point you say that President Obama made in an unusual comment. He said, you know, those who are opposed to intervention &mdash;-
BLASE BONPANE : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : &mdash;- are actually supporting some kind of intervention here, critical of those who are asking the US to somehow intervene in what&#8217;s happened in Honduras.
BLASE BONPANE : This is a very strange comment, because we were asking that the law be upheld and that criminals who had overthrown the government of Honduras not be treated on an equal basis. It&#8217;s as if someone stole your car, and the judge said, ”Well, maybe I&#8217;ll give it back to the one who stole it.” You know, there&#8217;s no logic in the behavior. So we were very disappointed in Obama in that case.
AMY GOODMAN : The Salvadoran defense minister says that the military is ready in El Salvador to apologize. What does that mean?
BLASE BONPANE : Well, it means someone high up may make an apology. But for years, they were torturing the Salvadoran people, and that&#8217;s why Archbishop Romero commanded them to mutiny. He said, you know, “I beg you, I order you, stop the repression.” And he was murdered very shortly after.
AMY GOODMAN : And, of course, that famous last speech &mdash;-
BLASE BONPANE : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : &mdash;- before he was murdered was played in a boom box in the trees of Fort Benning by Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of the School of the Americas Watch.
BLASE BONPANE : Roy Bourgeois climbed a tree and aired that sermon at Fort Benning over the barracks where the Salvadoran troops were sleeping. And they came out hearing the voice of the archbishop. Then, of course, Roy was arrested. He has spent at least five years in federal prisons in his protests. And it&#8217;s a great testimony for peace that he&#8217;s given to the world.
And that was the beginning of the real strong opposition. So he&#8217;s had now support from all over the country, from universities and high school students. It will be at least 20,000 there this weekend to once again protest at Fort Benning. So it&#8217;s a very exciting time.
But the intervention in the Americas continues. Honduras is the &mdash; one of the ALBA nations. The ALBA nations, including Venezuela and Bolivia, and going into Ecuador and Cuba, as well, and Nicaragua, are a whole new direction for Latin America and a very exciting direction. They&#8217;ve come in with a new currency. They&#8217;ve come in with a new banking system. They&#8217;ve come in with a new political system, which the people of Latin America have had in their hopes, desires and anxieties for centuries. And we&#8217;re trying to break that link, striking at the weakest member of the ALBA nations. Next, if this succeeds in Honduras, Paraguay will be next, and then it will be Nicaragua, and then it will be El Salvador, because, you remember, the FMLN is now in charge in El Salvador. The FSLN is in charge in Nicaragua. It&#8217;s amazing. So, many of us never thought we&#8217;d see so much rapid change in Latin America so fast in our lifetime.
AMY GOODMAN : Blase Bonpane, you just turned eighty earlier this year.
BLASE BONPANE : Oh, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN : Happy birthday.
BLASE BONPANE : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : So, your thoughts on Latin America, as you describe the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas &mdash;-
BLASE BONPANE : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : &mdash;- ALBA , the new leadership in Latin America, and how the US, you feel, should be dealing with Latin America?
BLASE BONPANE : Yes, I think the whole new movement is irreversible. It&#8217;s not going to return back where it was. And it&#8217;s a very exciting development. We shouldn&#8217;t be afraid of it. We operate on paranoia, of great fear, you know, of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales and all the way down to Uruguay and Chile. The movement is in process. And it is such a shame that we can&#8217;t be part and parcel of that movement. When Obama went to the meeting with the thirty-two countries, Trinidad, Tobago, the parting shot from the ALBA nations was, quote, &quot;Are you a prisoner?&quot; They really felt that &mdash;-
AMY GOODMAN : What do you mean?
BLASE BONPANE : Well, they felt that Obama seemed to be under the spell of the military.
AMY GOODMAN : Who said to him, “Are you a prisoner?”
BLASE BONPANE : I think it came directly from Hugo Chavez -&mdash; “Are you a prisoner?” &mdash; because they&#8217;ve seen prisoner. And I’ve seen presidents who were prisoners in Guatemala, that were elected and then immediately told by the military, “You will do what we say, or you&#8217;re out of here.” And we almost feel that happening with Obama now. It&#8217;s quite frightening.
AMY GOODMAN : His policy on Cuba?
BLASE BONPANE : His policy on Cuba has been to do a few small issues, nothing in the area that should be done. Our business with Cuba has increased massively in recent years, in spite of the fact that it may appear to be illegal. But the rice farmers of Louisiana and other places are doing a lot of business with Cuba.
AMY GOODMAN : How?
BLASE BONPANE : Well, they just &mdash; they&#8217;re tolerated by the Treasury Department. And the business goes on. But the whole thing should be ended, the massive blockade that has gone on for a half century, you know. And it still goes on, and it&#8217;s still very difficult for people to spend time in Cuba. If you go there as a &mdash;- for a vacation, you can be arrested and fined. Canadians have been going there for decades. It&#8217;s one of their favorite vacation places.
AMY GOODMAN : Blase Bonpane, the world peace march that&#8217;s coming through Los Angeles here?
BLASE BONPANE : We&#8217;re very excited about it. We&#8217;ve been working on it avidly. I just asked President Zelaya to endorse it, and I&#8217;m waiting for his response. We have -&mdash;
AMY GOODMAN : You&#8217;ve been speaking to him directly?
BLASE BONPANE : Yes, I have. And I think he will give his full endorsement, together with many other heads of state that have given their endorsement. It will arrive in Los Angeles on the 1st of December. It will be here through the 2nd and then go on to San Diego, Mexico, and into Central and South.
AMY GOODMAN : And who&#8217;s organized it?
BLASE BONPANE : Well, it’s organized by the people who are marching. It&#8217;s a very unusual organization that started in New Zealand. And it&#8217;s going 99,000 miles around the world in ninety days, and it&#8217;s on behalf of peace, nonviolence, an end to the nuclear threat to the world. We feel that the environmental movement has got to include the threat of nuclear war, because, talk about global warming, if we have a nuclear exchange, there’s going to be an awful lot of global warming. So we want to see the environmental movement and the peace movement get married, you know, in other words, to join forces.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, I want to thank you, Blase Bonpane, for joining us, former Maryknoll priest, serves as the director of the Office of the Americas, a human rights institution here in Los Angeles. That world peace march begun October 2nd in New Zealand &mdash;-
BLASE BONPANE : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : &mdash;- on the anniversary of Gandhi’s birth.AMYGOODMAN: Thousands of human rights activists are gathering at Fort Benning, Georgia this weekend for the annual protest to shut down the US Army training center once known as the School of the Americas. The school, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or WHISC, is used to train Latin American soldiers in combat, counterinsurgency and counter-narcotics. Critics have dubbed the training center the "School of the Assassins," because some of its graduates have been responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America.

This year’s protest will commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the murder of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador, their housekeeper and her daughter by the US-backed Salvadoran military. The Jesuit priests were killed November 16, 1989, twenty years ago this week, when a military unit entered the Central American University campus and shot them to death — the priests’ housekeeper and her daughter also killed. The Jesuits had been outspoken advocates for the poor and critics of human rights abuses committed by the ARENA government. Many of the soldiers involved in the murders were graduates of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning.

Earlier this week in El Salvador, the Jesuit priests were bestowed the nation’s highest civilian award, marking the first time the Salvadoran government has honored the priests since their deaths. El Salvador’s defense minister announced the military is ready to ask for forgiveness and open its archives to a long-sought investigation. The current head of the Central American University, Father Jose Maria Tojeira, welcomed the posthumous recognition.

FATHERJOSEMARIATOJEIRA: [translated] As a matter of fact, this is the first time in twenty years that Salvadoran states, by one of its powers, recognizes Jesuits’ dignity. Many people from all parties — of course, ARENA, as well — commented before those priests were great men who helped to end war before, because their martyrdom pushed to accelerate peace talks. But never in twenty years an official word of recognition for those people’s dignity. This is the first time, and I think it’s a very important symbol that should be opened to all victims from El Salvador.

AMYGOODMAN: To talk more about the 1989 killing of the Jesuits and the state of Latin American affairs, I’m joined here in Los Angeles by Blase Bonpane. He’s a former Maryknoll priest who serves as the director of the Office of the Americas here in Los Angeles. For more than four decades, he has worked to promote human rights in Latin America. He also hosts the show World Focus on Pacifica Radio’s KPFK here in Los Angeles and the author of many books, including Civilization Is Possible.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Blase Bonpane.

BLASEBONPANE: Thank you, Amy. It’s good to be here.

AMYGOODMAN: Talk about the significance of this anniversary. You knew the six Jesuit priests.

BLASEBONPANE: Yes. Our last visit with them was in a labor gathering just about a year before they were killed. We all met at the university there in El Salvador, la UCA. And Father Ellacuria really was in charge of the gathering. He didn’t just welcome us to the university; he was part and parcel of chairing the entire meeting. We were heavily buzzed by the helicopters at that time, and there were a lot of threats. Febe Velasquez was killed during that week. She was head of one of the major unions in El Salvador. And we fanned out from there to the countryside and saw the particular rebel activity in the area. And that was just about a year before they were killed in 1989.

AMYGOODMAN: Talk about the chronology that year that included a series of murders.

BLASEBONPANE: Well, it goes on, actually, starting — you can start as early as 1971, when Father Ellacuria got there, and then the bombing of the university began in ’75. In ’77, there were twelve students killed, some from the university and some from the state university, and there were twenty wounded. They just opened fire on them. The bombing continued at the university of Father Ellacuria’s offices, of the library and of the high school. There’s a high school also in the area. So he was constantly under attack because of the charges of liberation theology. And if we read the torture manuals, which School of the Americas Watch uncovered, we see direct reference to theology of liberation as a subversive act, as a subversive organization on behalf of the people of El Salvador.

And then, of course, 1977, Father Rutilio Grande was killed, another Jesuit. And that was the time when Archbishop Romero said, “Me convertí,” “They converted me.” By that, he meant he was on — there on behalf of the poor and that he was no longer part of the oligarchic military connection, which used to be called the Holy Trinity in El Salvador. And, you know, the fact that he identified with the poorest of the poor, he became an object of threats, as well. And, of course, he was killed in 1980 on the 24th of March, and that was followed by the killing of the sisters, the four sisters, on December 2nd of 1980.

AMYGOODMAN: And for those who don’t know the history, which is not necessarily people’s fault —-

BLASEBONPANE: Yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: —- since so much of the corporate media in this country whites out history —-

BLASEBONPANE: Oh, yes.

AMYGOODMAN: —- the sisters, the nuns, you’re talking about.

BLASEBONPANE: Yes. Oh, yes. They were Maryknoll sisters, an Ursuline sister and a lay sister, as well. And they were killed on December 2nd, 1980. And this continued —-

AMYGOODMAN: By who?

BLASEBONPANE: Well, they were killed really by the security forces. They were raped and killed. And that also led to the conversion of Ambassador White, who’s been speaking on behalf of the -—

AMYGOODMAN: That’s the US ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, at the time.

BLASEBONPANE: Yes. Yes, they had had dinner with him the night before, and he entered into the fray. And, of course, that was a great turning point. Joe Moakley and other Congress people got into it at that time.

And then, years later, actually — we’re talking about nine years later — the Jesuits were killed. But in between that time, tens of thousands of people were killed. The religious people have no more right to live than anyone else, and so it was every day torturing and killing.

And it is so ironic that today the Congress of the United States has a special commemoration of the Jesuits, Resolution 761. They mention them all. It reminds me of the Scriptural statement that first they kill the prophets, then they honor them. You know, and so, here they are, all mentioned: Father Ellacuria, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Segundo Montes, all of them mentioned in the congressional —-

AMYGOODMAN: Why don’t you read their names?

BLASEBONPANE: OK, the first is the rector, Ignacio Ellacuria, then his vice rector, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Segundo Montes, Amando Lopez, Juan Ramon Moreno, Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, the housekeeper Julia Elba Ramos, and her daughter Celina Mariset Ramos. And that’s the twentieth occasion of their death at the University of Central America Jose Simeon Canas, located in El Salvador.

And they talk about how the military came in and murdered them all, and then they speak about the work that each one of them did, including the housekeeper and her daughter. And then they mentioned the Jesuit colleges in the United States. And, of course, they also mention that a Salvadoran jury found guilty two Salvadoran military officers, including Colonel Guillermo Alfredo Benavides Moreno. And that was the first time in Salvadoran history when any of the military were charged.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you bring this to the present, because you have the honoring for the first time in El Salvador, you have this resolution, and you have this protest that’s taking place now?

BLASEBONPANE: Yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: This is twenty years later at the School of the Americas.

BLASEBONPANE: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, now has a different name: WHISC.

BLASEBONPANE: Yes. Well, it’s important to continue that, because we’re still involved in intervention. El Salvador has had its people in the streets for over 150 days. I spoke to President Zelaya this week. They are dealing with the junta in the same fashion.

AMYGOODMAN: This is in Honduras.

BLASEBONPANE: Yeah, in Honduras. They’re dealing with the junta as if the junta has as much right to be there as the actual president. And so, the battle goes on. And President Zelaya should be reinstated. And unfortunately, we’re not giving him the support we should.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, let’s talk about that, the US role in what’s going on right now in Honduras.

BLASEBONPANE: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: The democratically elected president, Zelaya, was ousted on June 28th.

BLASEBONPANE: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: He snuck back into the country, still is holed up at the Brazilian embassy. A deal that was announced as being brokered that would return Zelaya in the last few weeks seems to have fallen apart, and now there are elections coming up. Explain what you think the United States has done and should be doing.

BLASEBONPANE: Well, at this very time, Senator DeMint made a deal with the State Department, with Hillary Clinton and others, to say, “Alright, I’ll support Tom Shannon as the ambassador to Brazil.” And he’s bragging about the fact that, as a result of that, he got their non-cooperation with the reinstatement of President Zelaya. And so, we have actually seen the open tension within the State Department at this time, and President Obama has remained on the sidelines on this one. I think he’s making a great mistake, because he said, “They’re asking me now to intervene,” as though we were asked to intervene militarily. We’re not asking that. We’re asking that the law be kept. The Organization of American States has jurisdiction to solve this problem. They decided entirely in favor of President Zelaya.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to go back for a minute. You mentioned Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

BLASEBONPANE: Yes, yes.

AMYGOODMAN: Explain exactly what he has done and what he has said.

BLASEBONPANE: He negotiated -—

AMYGOODMAN: He went to Honduras, is that right?

BLASEBONPANE: Yes, he did.

AMYGOODMAN: With a delegation.

BLASEBONPANE: And then he said, “Alright, I am blocking Tom Shannon from being ambassador to Brazil. And I will unblock that if you lay off the reinstatement of Zelaya.”

AMYGOODMAN: This was his message to the Obama administration.

BLASEBONPANE: Yes, and he’s bragging about it quite publicly. And so, they did. They agreed, which is very strange to me, because Obama condemned the coup. At the same time, he is not allowing the law to be kept. The law is structured through the Organization of American States and the UN, all of which have condemned the coup.

AMYGOODMAN: And I want to go back to that point you say that President Obama made in an unusual comment. He said, you know, those who are opposed to intervention —-

BLASEBONPANE: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: —- are actually supporting some kind of intervention here, critical of those who are asking the US to somehow intervene in what’s happened in Honduras.

BLASEBONPANE: This is a very strange comment, because we were asking that the law be upheld and that criminals who had overthrown the government of Honduras not be treated on an equal basis. It’s as if someone stole your car, and the judge said, ”Well, maybe I’ll give it back to the one who stole it.” You know, there’s no logic in the behavior. So we were very disappointed in Obama in that case.

AMYGOODMAN: The Salvadoran defense minister says that the military is ready in El Salvador to apologize. What does that mean?

BLASEBONPANE: Well, it means someone high up may make an apology. But for years, they were torturing the Salvadoran people, and that’s why Archbishop Romero commanded them to mutiny. He said, you know, “I beg you, I order you, stop the repression.” And he was murdered very shortly after.

AMYGOODMAN: And, of course, that famous last speech —-

BLASEBONPANE: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: —- before he was murdered was played in a boom box in the trees of Fort Benning by Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of the School of the Americas Watch.

BLASEBONPANE: Roy Bourgeois climbed a tree and aired that sermon at Fort Benning over the barracks where the Salvadoran troops were sleeping. And they came out hearing the voice of the archbishop. Then, of course, Roy was arrested. He has spent at least five years in federal prisons in his protests. And it’s a great testimony for peace that he’s given to the world.

And that was the beginning of the real strong opposition. So he’s had now support from all over the country, from universities and high school students. It will be at least 20,000 there this weekend to once again protest at Fort Benning. So it’s a very exciting time.

But the intervention in the Americas continues. Honduras is the — one of the ALBA nations. The ALBA nations, including Venezuela and Bolivia, and going into Ecuador and Cuba, as well, and Nicaragua, are a whole new direction for Latin America and a very exciting direction. They’ve come in with a new currency. They’ve come in with a new banking system. They’ve come in with a new political system, which the people of Latin America have had in their hopes, desires and anxieties for centuries. And we’re trying to break that link, striking at the weakest member of the ALBA nations. Next, if this succeeds in Honduras, Paraguay will be next, and then it will be Nicaragua, and then it will be El Salvador, because, you remember, the FMLN is now in charge in El Salvador. The FSLN is in charge in Nicaragua. It’s amazing. So, many of us never thought we’d see so much rapid change in Latin America so fast in our lifetime.

AMYGOODMAN: Blase Bonpane, you just turned eighty earlier this year.

BLASEBONPANE: Oh, yeah.

AMYGOODMAN: Happy birthday.

BLASEBONPANE: Thank you.

AMYGOODMAN: So, your thoughts on Latin America, as you describe the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas —-

BLASEBONPANE: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: —- ALBA, the new leadership in Latin America, and how the US, you feel, should be dealing with Latin America?

BLASEBONPANE: Yes, I think the whole new movement is irreversible. It’s not going to return back where it was. And it’s a very exciting development. We shouldn’t be afraid of it. We operate on paranoia, of great fear, you know, of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales and all the way down to Uruguay and Chile. The movement is in process. And it is such a shame that we can’t be part and parcel of that movement. When Obama went to the meeting with the thirty-two countries, Trinidad, Tobago, the parting shot from the ALBA nations was, quote, "Are you a prisoner?" They really felt that —-

AMYGOODMAN: What do you mean?

BLASEBONPANE: Well, they felt that Obama seemed to be under the spell of the military.

AMYGOODMAN: Who said to him, “Are you a prisoner?”

BLASEBONPANE: I think it came directly from Hugo Chavez -— “Are you a prisoner?” — because they’ve seen prisoner. And I’ve seen presidents who were prisoners in Guatemala, that were elected and then immediately told by the military, “You will do what we say, or you’re out of here.” And we almost feel that happening with Obama now. It’s quite frightening.

AMYGOODMAN: His policy on Cuba?

BLASEBONPANE: His policy on Cuba has been to do a few small issues, nothing in the area that should be done. Our business with Cuba has increased massively in recent years, in spite of the fact that it may appear to be illegal. But the rice farmers of Louisiana and other places are doing a lot of business with Cuba.

AMYGOODMAN: How?

BLASEBONPANE: Well, they just — they’re tolerated by the Treasury Department. And the business goes on. But the whole thing should be ended, the massive blockade that has gone on for a half century, you know. And it still goes on, and it’s still very difficult for people to spend time in Cuba. If you go there as a —- for a vacation, you can be arrested and fined. Canadians have been going there for decades. It’s one of their favorite vacation places.

AMYGOODMAN: Blase Bonpane, the world peace march that’s coming through Los Angeles here?

BLASEBONPANE: We’re very excited about it. We’ve been working on it avidly. I just asked President Zelaya to endorse it, and I’m waiting for his response. We have -—

AMYGOODMAN: You’ve been speaking to him directly?

BLASEBONPANE: Yes, I have. And I think he will give his full endorsement, together with many other heads of state that have given their endorsement. It will arrive in Los Angeles on the 1st of December. It will be here through the 2nd and then go on to San Diego, Mexico, and into Central and South.

AMYGOODMAN: And who’s organized it?

BLASEBONPANE: Well, it’s organized by the people who are marching. It’s a very unusual organization that started in New Zealand. And it’s going 99,000 miles around the world in ninety days, and it’s on behalf of peace, nonviolence, an end to the nuclear threat to the world. We feel that the environmental movement has got to include the threat of nuclear war, because, talk about global warming, if we have a nuclear exchange, there’s going to be an awful lot of global warming. So we want to see the environmental movement and the peace movement get married, you know, in other words, to join forces.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Blase Bonpane, for joining us, former Maryknoll priest, serves as the director of the Office of the Americas, a human rights institution here in Los Angeles. That world peace march begun October 2nd in New Zealand —-

BLASEBONPANE: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: —- on the anniversary of Gandhi’s birth.]]>

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500Hoodwinked: Former Economic Hit Man John Perkins Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded -- and How to Remake Themhttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/10/hoodwinked_former_economic_hit_man_john
tag:democracynow.org,2009-11-10:en/story/5eeb3d AMY GOODMAN : The film is The End of Poverty? And we’re going to go to a clip of the film, where our next guest interviews the vice president of Bolivia. Yes, I’m talking about John Perkins, the bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man . He is back with a new book. It’s called Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded &mdash; and What We Need to Do to Remake Them . We go now to John Perkins, in this clip from The End of Poverty? , interviewing Bolivia’s vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, for the film The End of Poverty?
JOHN PERKINS : [translated] Bolivia is a country with so many natural resources. Why does a country like this have so many poor people?
VICE PRESIDENT ALVARO GARCIA LINERA : [translated] I think this has to do with what we call the colonial condition of our societies. Countries that have a collection of natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, seem to be condemned to be poor countries. It’s paradoxical, isn&#8217;t it? Unfortunately, colonialism is always a part of the development of capitalism. There is an emancipation process that happens through the implementation of a different global economic order than the current one. That’s why a total, simple and definite break with colonialism allows us to imagine a world economic order, globalized in a different way than that which is driven by the accumulation of capital.
JOHN PERKINS : [translated] What things can Bolivia do, or should they do, to bring about necessary change?
VICE PRESIDENT ALVARO GARCIA LINERA : [translated] This is a country of nine million inhabitants, where 62 percent of the population is indigenous, both in the cities and the farmlands. Bolivia is a country with mestizos , Aymaras, Quechas, Guaranis, Mojenio, Trinitarios, Irionos, thirty-two indigenous groups and nations. But, unfortunately, in the 181 years of the republic&#8217;s political life, the indigenous people were never recognized as citizens with collective rights. Never. This continent is waking up. I like the idea of “a continent in movement” as a synthesis of what’s been happening during the past five to six years in Latin America. There’s a movement developing of world citizenship and planetary responsibility. There is something beautiful happening in these countries which makes them get involved in the situations of countries like Bolivia, a country that wants to live a better life, where 58 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day.
AMY GOODMAN : An excerpt from the research done for The End of Poverty? That clip was actually made for Democracy Now! Thanks to Philippe Diaz and Cinema Libre Studio for that. the interview done with the Bolivian vice president by John Perkins, who will now join us in our firehouse studio after break.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : John Perkins calls himself a former economic hit man. He has seen the signs of today’s financial meltdown before. The subprime mortgage fiasco, the collapse of the banking industry, the rising unemployment rate &mdash; these are all familiar to him.
Perkins was on the front lines of monitoring and helping create these very events that were once just confined to the third world. From ’71 to 1981, he worked for the international consulting firm Chas T. Main, where he was a self-described “economic hit man.” It was based in Boston.
He’s the author of the New York Times bestseller, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The Secret History of the American Empire . Well, he’s out with a new book. It’s called Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded &mdash; and What We Need to Do to Remake Them .
He joins me here in the firehouse studio.
Welcome, John. Well, for starters, though we’ve discussed this before, what exactly does an “economic hit man” mean?
JOHN PERKINS : Well, Amy, I think it’s fair to say that we economic hit men have managed to create the world’s first truly global empire. And it’s basically a secret empire.
We do it in many ways, but principally, we identify a country that has resources that corporations covet, like oil, arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sisters. The money never actually goes to the country; it goes to our own corporations to build the infrastructure projects in that country that help a few very wealthy people, but don&#8217;t benefit the majority of the people, who are too poor to buy electricity or have cars to drive on the highways. And yet, they’re left holding a huge debt that they can’t repay.
So we go back at some point and say, “You know, you can’t pay your debts. Give us a pound of flesh. Sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies. Vote with us on the next critical UN vote. Allow us to build a military base in your backyard.” Something along these lines.
And when we fail &mdash; as I talk in my books, I failed with Jaime Roldos, president of Ecuador, Omar Torrijos of Panama &mdash; the Jackals go in and either overthrow or assassinate these leaders. And if the Jackals fail, as they did in Iraq, then we send in the military.
AMY GOODMAN : And what personal experience do you have to prove this?
JOHN PERKINS : Well, I was there. You know, I was with Jaime Roldos in Ecuador. I was the guy &mdash; one of the guys who was supposed to corrupt him, bring him around, and Omar Torrijos of Panama and many others. When I failed with those two gentlemen, the Jackals went in and assassinated both of them. And I was there; I was in those front lines. My official title was chief economist of Charles T. Main. I had about three dozen employees working for me and did this for ten years, and finally saw the light.
But I think what’s &mdash; you know, what’s really important about all this is that in this period of time, since the 1970s, and really beginning very strongly in the 1980s, we’ve created what I consider a mutant, viral form of capitalism. Earlier on the program, you showed the statistics of 37 percent of the people in the survey not believing that capitalism is working. I don’t think the failure is capitalism. I think it’s the specific kind of capitalism that we’ve developed in the last thirty or forty years, particularly beginning with the time of Reagan and Milton Friedman’s economic theories, which stress that the only goal of business is to maximize profit, regardless of the social and environmental costs, and not to regulate businesses at all &mdash; regulation is bad, all forms &mdash; and to privatize everything, so that everything is run by private business. And this mutant form of capitalism, which I think is really a predatory form of capitalism, has created an extremely unstable, unsustainable, unjust and very, very dangerous world.
AMY GOODMAN : You talk about the robber barons, the modern day robber barons. Who do you mean?
JOHN PERKINS : So many of them. You know, we&#8217;ve seen them recently on Wall Street, the people from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and so many other organizations, people like Jack Welch, who is a former CEO of General Electric. And as I lecture at business schools and MBA programs, Jack Welch is often held up as this idol. Jack Welch laid off a quarter of GE’s employees. You know, he said he was making the company meaner and leaner &mdash; he certainly was making it meaner &mdash; gave himself huge raises and bonuses at the same time, turned General Electric essentially from a manufacturing company into a financial services company, which really was one of the leaders in taking us down this course today that we&#8217;re on of a failed economic system.
And we truly have a failed economic system at this point. It’s deep. You know, one of the reasons I wrote Hoodwinked is because I saw a lot of books coming out that deal with what I consider triage. What do you do with AIG ? What do you do with General Electric? What do you do about the immediate problems with Wall Street? But the problem is much, much deeper. There&#8217;s a cancer beneath all that. And this is this very basics of our current economic system. And we must delve down and root out that cancer and move into something much better.
I have a two-year-old grandson. And as I look at this baby, you know, I think, what’s this world going to look like in six decades, when he’s my age? If we stay the course, it will be horrible. But we have this opportunity now, and I think this economic turmoil that we&#8217;re in today is teaching us that we must change. We have a failed system. We must create something better. And we must realize that my grandson can’t possibly hope to inherit a sustainable, just and peaceful world, unless every child growing up in Ethiopia and in Bolivia and in Indonesia and in Israel and Palestine has that same expectation. For the first time in history, we&#8217;re really living on a very, very tiny, highly integrated planet, and we’re all communicating with each other. Everybody is listening to Democracy Now! all around the world. We’re all talking on the cell phone and by internet. We really get it. We’re a very, very small community, and we need to recognize that.
AMY GOODMAN : John Perkins, you have an interesting theory about what happened in Honduras, the coup that just took place there. What do you think?
JOHN PERKINS : Well, I don’t think it’s a theory. You know, I think it’s &mdash; I was in Panama at the time that the coup took place. And, you know, the democratic &mdash;-
AMY GOODMAN : In June.
JOHN PERKINS : Yeah. The democratically elected president, Zelaya, had called for a new constitution to replace the old one that was really set up by the oligarchy in favor of the very, very, very wealthy and the international companies. He also called for a 60 percent increase in the bottom wage rate, which had a huge impact on Dole and Chiquita, two of the biggest employers in that company. They, along with a number of companies that have sweatshops in Honduras, strongly objected, very much the same way that they had objected to Aristide in Haiti, when he did something similar, and called in the military. The general in charge of the military was a graduate of our School of the Americas, this, you know, school that’s famous for creating dictators, and they overthrew Zelaya. It was a classic CIA -sponsored type of coup, very similar to what United Fruit had done in Guatemala in the early ’50s. And, of course, United Fruit became Chiquita.
So you had this -&mdash; you know, this strong relationship and got rid of this democratically elected president, because he was drawing a line in the sand. We had seen ten countries in Latin America bring in new presidents who are instituting very significant reforms in favor of the people, in favor of using local resources to help the people pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and I think the corporatocracy decided to draw a line in the sand in Honduras.
AMY GOODMAN : Iran and the swirling clouds?
JOHN PERKINS : You know, I think Iran today &mdash; Iran is this example of where we went in and overthrew a democratically elected president, Mosaddeq, in the early ’50s, and we’ve seen terrible blowback from that ever since. It’s, you know, not only in Iran, but it impacted the whole Middle East. If we had supported that president, who simply wanted to use more of his oil money, his country’s oil money, to help the poor people &mdash; we strongly objected. We overthrew him in a coup and replaced him with the Shah. So we’ve seen the blowback that comes out of that. And this has led to this situation that we’re in today.
And the swirling clouds, to me, are the big corporations. So, in the past, you had roughly 200 countries on the planet, which a few had a lot of power &mdash; the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States. But today the geopolitics might better be envisioned as the same roughly 200 countries with these huge swirling clouds that are the big corporations. And they are really calling the shots all over the planet. They know no national boundaries. They don’t listen to any specific set of laws. They strike deals with the Chinese and the Taiwanese and the Tibetans and the Israelis and the Arab nations. Whoever has the markets or the resources, they cut deal with &mdash; deals with. And as we’ve seen in our most recent election here in the United States, we bring in a president who is very diametrically different from the former president, and yet the corporations are still calling the shots.
Which takes us back, Amy, to the fact that we, the people, must create the change. This has always been the case. And this is a clarion call for us at this point now in history, that we must get out there. We’ve got to get behind Obama and all the other politicians. We’ve got to force the corporations to change their goal, get away from this goal of maximizing profits regardless of social and environmental costs, and instead say, “Yeah, it’s OK. Make profits, but only within a context of creating a sustainable, just and peaceful world,” only within the context of creating a world that my grandson will want to inherit, and that means every child on the planet will want to inherit it, because I think it’s really important that we understand today we cannot have homeland security unless we understand that the whole planet is our homeland. Our homeland is now no longer defined by the Rio Grande and the Canadian border. It is &mdash; we are one &mdash; one human species living on a very fragile planet.
AMY GOODMAN : What is the burden of the melting glaciers?
JOHN PERKINS : The melting &mdash; you know, I was in Tibet a couple of years ago, and I stood there with these nomads and looked at this glacier that had been down at the road a decade or so before, now it’s way back a mile away. And these glaciers up in the Himalayas feed the five largest rivers in the world. They provide water to China and to India. And as these glaciers melt, the water is drying up. The glaciers are melting because of global warming, because of us. And what we have to understand is the huge consequences. If these five rivers no longer can feed water to the Chinese and the Indians, these people are going to die of thirst. And before they die of thirst, they’ll become very rebellious.
We have to understand that one of the root causes of terrorism &mdash; I don’t even like the word “terrorism,” because I don’t think it really is &mdash; it’s a whole bunch of diverse groups all over the world. But in every &mdash; practically every case, it results from starvation, from desperation. I’ve met a lot of terrorists. I’ve interviewed them for books. I’ve never met one who wanted to be a terrorist. These are farmers who have been driven off their farmlands by oil companies or hydroelectric projects, or they’re fishermen, like the Somali pirates, who can no longer make a living fishing, because their waters have been fished dry or destroyed by nuclear waste from US military vessels. I have not met anyone who wanted to be a terrorist. They’re desperate people. If we want to get rid of terrorism, we must get rid of the root causes, that cancer that is destroying our whole system.
AMY GOODMAN : The new rules you propose for business and government?
JOHN PERKINS : Well, you know, we all know that getting rid of the rules that protected us from another recession has helped to bring on this current recession, you know, things like Glass-Steagall and the banking laws and so forth. We need to implement a lot of those again.
But I think we also need another whole new set of laws that says businesses must be &mdash; look at being environmentally and socially responsible. For a hundred years after United States became the United States, no corporation was allowed to get a charter unless it could prove that it served the public interest. And charters came up for renewal every ten years or so. They didn’t get a renewal unless they could prove they served the public interest. That all changed with a Supreme Court ruling that made corporations equivalent to individuals in the late 1880s, and then John D. Rockefeller stepped in and really took things &mdash; made things go out of hand.
But we need to go back to an understanding that corporations are there to serve us. When I went to business school, I was taught that a good CEO takes care of the long-term interests of the corporation &mdash; the employees, the customers, the general economy &mdash; not just there to make short-term profits. And we really need to get back to that, to an understanding. I think we need laws and rules that say that corporations must be aiming toward creating a sustainable and just and peaceful world. We simply have to do that. These are our main controlling organizations today, and they must be answerable to what’s best in the public interest, not just the interests of a few very wealthy, powerful people.
AMY GOODMAN : John Perkins, self-confessed economic hit man, he’s got a new book out. It’s called Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded &mdash; and What We Need to Do to Remake Them .AMYGOODMAN: The film is The End of Poverty? And we’re going to go to a clip of the film, where our next guest interviews the vice president of Bolivia. Yes, I’m talking about John Perkins, the bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He is back with a new book. It’s called Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded — and What We Need to Do to Remake Them. We go now to John Perkins, in this clip from The End of Poverty?, interviewing Bolivia’s vice president, Alvaro Garcia Linera, for the film The End of Poverty?

JOHNPERKINS: [translated] Bolivia is a country with so many natural resources. Why does a country like this have so many poor people?

VICEPRESIDENTALVAROGARCIALINERA: [translated] I think this has to do with what we call the colonial condition of our societies. Countries that have a collection of natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, seem to be condemned to be poor countries. It’s paradoxical, isn’t it? Unfortunately, colonialism is always a part of the development of capitalism. There is an emancipation process that happens through the implementation of a different global economic order than the current one. That’s why a total, simple and definite break with colonialism allows us to imagine a world economic order, globalized in a different way than that which is driven by the accumulation of capital.

JOHNPERKINS: [translated] What things can Bolivia do, or should they do, to bring about necessary change?

VICEPRESIDENTALVAROGARCIALINERA: [translated] This is a country of nine million inhabitants, where 62 percent of the population is indigenous, both in the cities and the farmlands. Bolivia is a country with mestizos, Aymaras, Quechas, Guaranis, Mojenio, Trinitarios, Irionos, thirty-two indigenous groups and nations. But, unfortunately, in the 181 years of the republic’s political life, the indigenous people were never recognized as citizens with collective rights. Never. This continent is waking up. I like the idea of “a continent in movement” as a synthesis of what’s been happening during the past five to six years in Latin America. There’s a movement developing of world citizenship and planetary responsibility. There is something beautiful happening in these countries which makes them get involved in the situations of countries like Bolivia, a country that wants to live a better life, where 58 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day.

AMYGOODMAN: An excerpt from the research done for The End of Poverty? That clip was actually made for Democracy Now! Thanks to Philippe Diaz and Cinema Libre Studio for that. the interview done with the Bolivian vice president by John Perkins, who will now join us in our firehouse studio after break.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: John Perkins calls himself a former economic hit man. He has seen the signs of today’s financial meltdown before. The subprime mortgage fiasco, the collapse of the banking industry, the rising unemployment rate — these are all familiar to him.

Perkins was on the front lines of monitoring and helping create these very events that were once just confined to the third world. From ’71 to 1981, he worked for the international consulting firm Chas T. Main, where he was a self-described “economic hit man.” It was based in Boston.

He’s the author of the New York Times bestseller, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The Secret History of the American Empire. Well, he’s out with a new book. It’s called Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded — and What We Need to Do to Remake Them.

He joins me here in the firehouse studio.

Welcome, John. Well, for starters, though we’ve discussed this before, what exactly does an “economic hit man” mean?

JOHNPERKINS: Well, Amy, I think it’s fair to say that we economic hit men have managed to create the world’s first truly global empire. And it’s basically a secret empire.

We do it in many ways, but principally, we identify a country that has resources that corporations covet, like oil, arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sisters. The money never actually goes to the country; it goes to our own corporations to build the infrastructure projects in that country that help a few very wealthy people, but don’t benefit the majority of the people, who are too poor to buy electricity or have cars to drive on the highways. And yet, they’re left holding a huge debt that they can’t repay.

So we go back at some point and say, “You know, you can’t pay your debts. Give us a pound of flesh. Sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies. Vote with us on the next critical UN vote. Allow us to build a military base in your backyard.” Something along these lines.

And when we fail — as I talk in my books, I failed with Jaime Roldos, president of Ecuador, Omar Torrijos of Panama — the Jackals go in and either overthrow or assassinate these leaders. And if the Jackals fail, as they did in Iraq, then we send in the military.

AMYGOODMAN: And what personal experience do you have to prove this?

JOHNPERKINS: Well, I was there. You know, I was with Jaime Roldos in Ecuador. I was the guy — one of the guys who was supposed to corrupt him, bring him around, and Omar Torrijos of Panama and many others. When I failed with those two gentlemen, the Jackals went in and assassinated both of them. And I was there; I was in those front lines. My official title was chief economist of Charles T. Main. I had about three dozen employees working for me and did this for ten years, and finally saw the light.

But I think what’s — you know, what’s really important about all this is that in this period of time, since the 1970s, and really beginning very strongly in the 1980s, we’ve created what I consider a mutant, viral form of capitalism. Earlier on the program, you showed the statistics of 37 percent of the people in the survey not believing that capitalism is working. I don’t think the failure is capitalism. I think it’s the specific kind of capitalism that we’ve developed in the last thirty or forty years, particularly beginning with the time of Reagan and Milton Friedman’s economic theories, which stress that the only goal of business is to maximize profit, regardless of the social and environmental costs, and not to regulate businesses at all — regulation is bad, all forms — and to privatize everything, so that everything is run by private business. And this mutant form of capitalism, which I think is really a predatory form of capitalism, has created an extremely unstable, unsustainable, unjust and very, very dangerous world.

AMYGOODMAN: You talk about the robber barons, the modern day robber barons. Who do you mean?

JOHNPERKINS: So many of them. You know, we’ve seen them recently on Wall Street, the people from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and so many other organizations, people like Jack Welch, who is a former CEO of General Electric. And as I lecture at business schools and MBA programs, Jack Welch is often held up as this idol. Jack Welch laid off a quarter of GE’s employees. You know, he said he was making the company meaner and leaner — he certainly was making it meaner — gave himself huge raises and bonuses at the same time, turned General Electric essentially from a manufacturing company into a financial services company, which really was one of the leaders in taking us down this course today that we’re on of a failed economic system.

And we truly have a failed economic system at this point. It’s deep. You know, one of the reasons I wrote Hoodwinked is because I saw a lot of books coming out that deal with what I consider triage. What do you do with AIG? What do you do with General Electric? What do you do about the immediate problems with Wall Street? But the problem is much, much deeper. There’s a cancer beneath all that. And this is this very basics of our current economic system. And we must delve down and root out that cancer and move into something much better.

I have a two-year-old grandson. And as I look at this baby, you know, I think, what’s this world going to look like in six decades, when he’s my age? If we stay the course, it will be horrible. But we have this opportunity now, and I think this economic turmoil that we’re in today is teaching us that we must change. We have a failed system. We must create something better. And we must realize that my grandson can’t possibly hope to inherit a sustainable, just and peaceful world, unless every child growing up in Ethiopia and in Bolivia and in Indonesia and in Israel and Palestine has that same expectation. For the first time in history, we’re really living on a very, very tiny, highly integrated planet, and we’re all communicating with each other. Everybody is listening to Democracy Now! all around the world. We’re all talking on the cell phone and by internet. We really get it. We’re a very, very small community, and we need to recognize that.

AMYGOODMAN: John Perkins, you have an interesting theory about what happened in Honduras, the coup that just took place there. What do you think?

JOHNPERKINS: Well, I don’t think it’s a theory. You know, I think it’s — I was in Panama at the time that the coup took place. And, you know, the democratic —-

AMYGOODMAN: In June.

JOHNPERKINS: Yeah. The democratically elected president, Zelaya, had called for a new constitution to replace the old one that was really set up by the oligarchy in favor of the very, very, very wealthy and the international companies. He also called for a 60 percent increase in the bottom wage rate, which had a huge impact on Dole and Chiquita, two of the biggest employers in that company. They, along with a number of companies that have sweatshops in Honduras, strongly objected, very much the same way that they had objected to Aristide in Haiti, when he did something similar, and called in the military. The general in charge of the military was a graduate of our School of the Americas, this, you know, school that’s famous for creating dictators, and they overthrew Zelaya. It was a classic CIA-sponsored type of coup, very similar to what United Fruit had done in Guatemala in the early ’50s. And, of course, United Fruit became Chiquita.

So you had this -— you know, this strong relationship and got rid of this democratically elected president, because he was drawing a line in the sand. We had seen ten countries in Latin America bring in new presidents who are instituting very significant reforms in favor of the people, in favor of using local resources to help the people pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and I think the corporatocracy decided to draw a line in the sand in Honduras.

AMYGOODMAN: Iran and the swirling clouds?

JOHNPERKINS: You know, I think Iran today — Iran is this example of where we went in and overthrew a democratically elected president, Mosaddeq, in the early ’50s, and we’ve seen terrible blowback from that ever since. It’s, you know, not only in Iran, but it impacted the whole Middle East. If we had supported that president, who simply wanted to use more of his oil money, his country’s oil money, to help the poor people — we strongly objected. We overthrew him in a coup and replaced him with the Shah. So we’ve seen the blowback that comes out of that. And this has led to this situation that we’re in today.

And the swirling clouds, to me, are the big corporations. So, in the past, you had roughly 200 countries on the planet, which a few had a lot of power — the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States. But today the geopolitics might better be envisioned as the same roughly 200 countries with these huge swirling clouds that are the big corporations. And they are really calling the shots all over the planet. They know no national boundaries. They don’t listen to any specific set of laws. They strike deals with the Chinese and the Taiwanese and the Tibetans and the Israelis and the Arab nations. Whoever has the markets or the resources, they cut deal with — deals with. And as we’ve seen in our most recent election here in the United States, we bring in a president who is very diametrically different from the former president, and yet the corporations are still calling the shots.

Which takes us back, Amy, to the fact that we, the people, must create the change. This has always been the case. And this is a clarion call for us at this point now in history, that we must get out there. We’ve got to get behind Obama and all the other politicians. We’ve got to force the corporations to change their goal, get away from this goal of maximizing profits regardless of social and environmental costs, and instead say, “Yeah, it’s OK. Make profits, but only within a context of creating a sustainable, just and peaceful world,” only within the context of creating a world that my grandson will want to inherit, and that means every child on the planet will want to inherit it, because I think it’s really important that we understand today we cannot have homeland security unless we understand that the whole planet is our homeland. Our homeland is now no longer defined by the Rio Grande and the Canadian border. It is — we are one — one human species living on a very fragile planet.

AMYGOODMAN: What is the burden of the melting glaciers?

JOHNPERKINS: The melting — you know, I was in Tibet a couple of years ago, and I stood there with these nomads and looked at this glacier that had been down at the road a decade or so before, now it’s way back a mile away. And these glaciers up in the Himalayas feed the five largest rivers in the world. They provide water to China and to India. And as these glaciers melt, the water is drying up. The glaciers are melting because of global warming, because of us. And what we have to understand is the huge consequences. If these five rivers no longer can feed water to the Chinese and the Indians, these people are going to die of thirst. And before they die of thirst, they’ll become very rebellious.

We have to understand that one of the root causes of terrorism — I don’t even like the word “terrorism,” because I don’t think it really is — it’s a whole bunch of diverse groups all over the world. But in every — practically every case, it results from starvation, from desperation. I’ve met a lot of terrorists. I’ve interviewed them for books. I’ve never met one who wanted to be a terrorist. These are farmers who have been driven off their farmlands by oil companies or hydroelectric projects, or they’re fishermen, like the Somali pirates, who can no longer make a living fishing, because their waters have been fished dry or destroyed by nuclear waste from US military vessels. I have not met anyone who wanted to be a terrorist. They’re desperate people. If we want to get rid of terrorism, we must get rid of the root causes, that cancer that is destroying our whole system.

AMYGOODMAN: The new rules you propose for business and government?

JOHNPERKINS: Well, you know, we all know that getting rid of the rules that protected us from another recession has helped to bring on this current recession, you know, things like Glass-Steagall and the banking laws and so forth. We need to implement a lot of those again.

But I think we also need another whole new set of laws that says businesses must be — look at being environmentally and socially responsible. For a hundred years after United States became the United States, no corporation was allowed to get a charter unless it could prove that it served the public interest. And charters came up for renewal every ten years or so. They didn’t get a renewal unless they could prove they served the public interest. That all changed with a Supreme Court ruling that made corporations equivalent to individuals in the late 1880s, and then John D. Rockefeller stepped in and really took things — made things go out of hand.

But we need to go back to an understanding that corporations are there to serve us. When I went to business school, I was taught that a good CEO takes care of the long-term interests of the corporation — the employees, the customers, the general economy — not just there to make short-term profits. And we really need to get back to that, to an understanding. I think we need laws and rules that say that corporations must be aiming toward creating a sustainable and just and peaceful world. We simply have to do that. These are our main controlling organizations today, and they must be answerable to what’s best in the public interest, not just the interests of a few very wealthy, powerful people.

AMYGOODMAN: John Perkins, self-confessed economic hit man, he’s got a new book out. It’s called Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded — and What We Need to Do to Remake Them.]]>

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500Internal Pressure Forces Honduran Coup Regime to Reverse Civil Liberties Crackdown, But Repression Continueshttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/29/internal_pressure_forces_honduran_coup_regime
tag:democracynow.org,2009-09-29:en/story/6d42d1 SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : The coup regime in Honduras appears to be backing off its attempt to shut down protests and limit free speech amidst growing protests for the restoration of the ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
On Sunday, the coup government of Roberto Micheletti announced a forty-five-day decree that imposed sweeping restrictions on civil liberties, including banning unauthorized public meetings, allowing the government to shut down broadcasters, and giving police the authority to make arrests without warrants.
After congressional leaders warned they would not approve the decree, Micheletti gave a televised news conference Monday evening asking for, quote, “forgiveness from the Honduran people” and said he would lift the decree as, quote, “quickly as possible.”
Earlier that day, masked police officers and soldiers shut down two media outlets that have criticized the coup regime. Government forces also cordoned off a street to prevent a march of several hundred supporters of ousted President Zelaya.
Zelaya has remained inside the Brazilian embassy since defiantly returning to Honduras one week ago. The Micheletti government has now given Brazil a ten-day deadline to hand over Zelaya or face the embassy’s closure. The coup regime issued the threat as its soldiers continued to surround the embassy and limit the delivery of supplies. Brazil has rejected the ultimatum and says Zelaya will stay as long as he needs. Brazil’s representative to the Organization of American States, Ruy de Lima Casaes e Silva, warned of the severity of the crisis.
RUY DE LIMA CASAES E SILVA : [translated] The situation in the embassy is a grave situation with a potential for drama. For that reason, the Brazilian government, by way of their foreign minister, solicited the UN Security Council to conduct a meeting to specifically deal with the insecurity of Brazil’s embassy in Tegucigalpa, especially as regards disrespecting the norms established in international charters regarding diplomatic missions.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : The coup regime on Monday refused entry to a delegation from the Organization of American States that had come to seek a negotiated solution to the crisis. Speaking in Washington, the US ambassador to the OAS , Lewis Amselem, criticized the coup regime’s decision but then turned around to issue a harsh condemnation of ousted Zelaya.
LEWIS AMSELEM : We therefore call on all within Honduras and outside Honduras to avoid actions and pronouncements which foment unrest and violence. The return of President Zelaya to Honduras, absent an agreement, is irresponsible and foolish and serves neither the interests of the Honduran people nor of those seeking the peaceful reestablishment of the democratic order in Honduras.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : On Monday night, Zelaya addressed the United Nations General Assembly via a mobile phone that his foreign minister held up to the podium.
PRESIDENT MANUEL ZELAYA : [translated] My greetings to the United Nations. My greetings to the United Nations. Anybody who had any doubt that a dictatorship is taking hold of my country, now with what has happened in the last ninety-three days of repression, I think that any of those doubts that might have subsisted are dispelled. But besides being subject to a coup d&#8217;état, Honduras is being subjected to a fascist rule, which is suppressing the rights of its citizens and which is oppressing the Honduran people.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : We go now to the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where we’re joined via Democracy Now! video stream by Andrés Conteris. He is the Program on the Americas director for Nonviolence International and also works at Democracy Now! en Español. He has been inside the Brazilian embassy for the past week.
We’re also joined from Washington, DC by Dr. Luther Castillo. He’s an indigenous physician from the Atlantic Coast of Honduras. He founded the first hospital and health center in that region. He is also secretary of communications for the National Resistance Front Against the Coup in Honduras. Shortly before the coup, he had been named director of International Cooperation in the Honduran Foreign Ministry.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! First, we’re going to go to Andrés Conteris. He’s joining us on the telephone, actually, from the &mdash; inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. Andrés, welcome to Democracy Now!
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : It’s a pleasure, Sharif.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : Can you start off by telling us what exactly is happening right now inside the embassy? What do you see outside? Are soldiers outside the embassy?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : Yes, there are many soldiers right outside the embassy. There are some hundreds, but the visible right outside here are probably a dozen. This place has been militarized since just over a week ago, right after the return of President Zelaya to Honduras. The repression was immediately felt in the very, very violent eviction that happened exactly one week ago this morning. Over 500 revelers who were dancing in the street were brutally repressed by the soldiers. Tear gas was used, and that tear gas completely filled the embassy here.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : And Andrés, you’ve been there for a week now. We’ve heard reports of a sound weapon being used, similar to the one that we reported on used in Pittsburgh at the G-20. Can you confirm or deny that?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : That weapon having to do with audio definitely was used: a very sharp, piercing noise that really, really causes deep, deep distress. Other weapons have been used. I have not been able to confirm gases used after the tear gas incident, but other people did feel a attack by gas during this past week.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : And the coup regime has given the Brazilian embassy ten days to hand over Manuel Zelaya or grant him asylum in Brazil. Brazil has denied this, has refused to do so. What is President Zelaya saying right now about what’s happening?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : What President Zelaya is saying is that the international community needs to follow up with the declarations that were approved by both the United Nations, the OAS , as well as the San Jose Accord. He is very open to dialogue in that framework of those documents. Every single one of them says that he needs to be restated &mdash; reinstated as the president, the democratically elected leader of Honduras. And this coup regime here is not willing to do that.
Other things that he says clearly are having to do with the incredible amount of repression that is being felt around Honduras. Just yesterday, they buried a young woman named Wendy, who died as a result of the tear gas a week ago here in the embassy area. She had asthma and suffered from that, was hospitalized and then later died. She’s just one of many, many who have passed away as a result of the brutality of the Micheletti regime.
And what is really disconcerting is that the United States, through the Obama administration, has not said one word condemning the human rights atrocities here, in spite of the fact that they have been very, very well documented by the most recognized human rights organizations in the world. Congressman Grijalva of Arizona wrote a very clear letter to Obama documenting all of this, and there has been no response by this administration in terms of publicly condemning the human rights violations by this regime.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : And speaking of the US response, last night we heard possibly the harshest condemnation from a top diplomat, a US top diplomat, Lewis Amselem, the representative to the OAS . He called Zelaya’s return “irresponsible and foolish.” Your response?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : This comment by Ambassador Amselem comes a week after Hillary Clinton clearly welcomed President Zelaya back to Honduras. So we’re seeing a double face in terms of the policy from the Obama administration in terms of, is he welcome, or is it foolish for him to have returned.
One thing to know about the background of Ambassador Amselem is that he was with the SOUTHCOM , the Pentagon’s organization in Latin America. And the military policy with regard to Honduras has to be mentioned, because it’s very key. The US continues to train Honduran soldiers at the School of the Americas, in spite of the fact that they have said that ties had been severed. Honduras remains invited to the military maneuvers called PANAMAX 2009, which were twenty-one countries invited from September 11th to September 22nd. And Honduras was on the list. The Pentagon never withdrew them. And the only reason they didn’t participate is because other countries in South America refused to go to the maneuvers if Honduras was going to remain as participating.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : And this issue of the crackdown on civil liberties, Micheletti issued a decree on Sunday, a forty-five-day decree, with sweeping restrictions on civil liberties. He has pledged to reverse that, following congressional leaders not giving him support. But this did &mdash; the day after he issued the decree, he closed down two media stations, one of them being Radio Globo, that I believe President Zelaya has frequently done interviews on. What has been the effect of this inside the embassy?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : Inside the embassy, what we have been feeling is a terrorism on the part of this regime as they issued this decree, which really defines them outright as an absolute dictatorship. Constitutional guarantees in the Honduran Constitution defend the right to gather, defend the right to movement and thinking and freedom of expression by the media. All of these were the articles that were suspended by this decree imposed by Micheletti, and because of pressure from the Congress, as well as international pressure, he was forced to back away from that. However, it did really cause a chill here at the embassy, as well as around the country.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : We’re also joined in Washington, DC by Dr. Luther Castillo.
Welcome to Democracy Now! , Dr. Castillo. You are the secretary of communications for the National Resistance Front Against the Coup in Honduras. You’re also a physician in Honduras, running a hospital there. First, tell us why you’re in Washington, DC.
DR. LUTHER CASTILLO : Well, good morning to everyone.
We are here in Washington, DC, trying to meet some human rights organizations and contact with some Congress representatives like Congressman Grijalva, who has been writing a great letter addressed to the President Obama to take immediately action on this violation of human right that is happening in Honduras every day.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : And you have called for a boycott of the elections in November? Why?
DR. LUTHER CASTILLO : Because we recognize that this election in November is an illegal election, who are going to be running in November. One of the strategies that the de facto government is trying to do in this illegal election is to do a continuation of a coup d’état in Honduras. Then all the issues that will be addressing by this de facto government is an illegal issue, then that makes that election in November to be illegal then. Our organization, that’s the national committee against the coup d’état, who is inside there, all the civil organization, indigenous organizations, unions and other organization in Honduras, are against this election in November, and we consider it illegal.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : Now, Dr. Castillo, you founded the first hospital on the Atlantic Coast region in Honduras. Talk about what that hospital was providing and what has happened since then, since the coup.
DR. LUTHER CASTILLO : Then this hospital was founded by Garifuna doctors who was training in Cuba. Then we returned back to our community to give healthcare to all people that didn’t have healthcare before. Then we started to build the hospital with our own community. And with President Zelaya, we signed an agreement how to give support and sustainability to this process, where we have been attending more than 300,000 people for free in the area.
And now the de facto government have been cut and have been &mdash; deny the agreement that we signed before with President Zelaya. Then that make our hospital now without helps to attend all those people, who are in the deep mountain and the more forest area and the department of Colon and Gracias a Dios, near to La Mosquitia, then who really need our help in those areas.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : And why has the coup regime tried to take over the hospital? Have they given you a reason for this?
DR. LUTHER CASTILLO : They just, I think &mdash; they just give us &mdash; tell us that we have to &mdash; we are working in the community as illegals there, and they just send us a new agreement to sign that new agreement, who didn’t recognize our doctors who are working there in the area with us. They don’t even give us any reason why they are doing that.
Then we are accustomed to fight against that. We live in Honduras. We really know what the discrimination that we have been facing as a poor people, as the Garifuna people in Honduras then. We decided, with our community and our doctors, to be there, to stay there and keep looking for solidarity and work, continue helping our people there.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : And finally, Dr. Castillo, you, yourself, personally have been targeted by the regime. How are you returning to Honduras, and how are you surviving there?
DR. LUTHER CASTILLO : Then I will be returning back. We just came here to do this work with &mdash; that national committee give us to do here, because we have to be there with our people, fighting, and we have to be there with our people, demonstrating peacefully in the street that we are against that regime of brutality that is happening in Honduras.
One of the real things that we like to clarify that we have been listening to the &mdash; some of the representative of the OA &mdash; Organization of States of America, I think this issue is concern to Honduran people, you know, to appoint if he’s responsible or irresponsible, that action that President Zelaya took. We want to clarify that President Zelaya is the only president who was be elected for us as Honduran people. He’s the only constitutional president of Honduras. Then we decide and we think, as Honduran people, that it’s a responsible action of President Zelaya to return back to our country. He’s a Honduran, and we elect him as a president. Then I think that issue is concerning us, and we don’t think that it’s a irresponsible action that he is taking right now. Then we want him to return to Honduras. And when some people are talking about what is concerning to the peace of Honduran people, we have been more than ninety days in the street demanding the immediately return for President Zelaya. Now he’s in the country. I think we congratulate that action, that courage of President Zelaya to return back to Honduras. That represent one of the step that we have to take to bring peace to our country.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : And what would you like to see the United States to be doing? What would you like to see President Obama to be doing regarding Honduras?
DR. LUTHER CASTILLO : Then we would like to see President Obama condemning all these violation of human right that have been happening in Honduras. We would like to see President Obama condemning and talking about all those people that have been killing in the street, all those young people who have been killing in the street, assassination. We would like to see President Obama talking to condemn all those women who &mdash; what military have been violating in the street of Honduras. And we would like to be &mdash; President Obama pushing more pressure on the &mdash; and the economic sanction to those [inaudible] family who are supporting the coup attack in Honduras. And we would like to see President Obama declaring definitely this issue as a military coup attack in Honduras.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : And finally, Andrés Conteris, any final words from inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : The United States has been having a trade embargo against Cuba for decades. And if they would even consider an economic embargo against this regime, this coup would end. That’s because there’s more than 70 to 75 percent of Honduran trade is with the United States, and they could not withstand a trade embargo. So the US has arrows in its quiver that it could use to end this crisis, but it is choosing not to do so. And the US people must rise up and pressure the Obama administration to do more for Honduras and human rights here.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : Andrés Conteris, thank you very much for joining us. He’s the Program on the Americas director for Nonviolence International, also works at Democracy Now! en Español. And special thanks also to Dr. Luther Castillo. He’s an indigenous physician from the Atlantic Coast of Honduras, secretary of communications for the National Resistance Front Against the Coup in Honduras.SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: The coup regime in Honduras appears to be backing off its attempt to shut down protests and limit free speech amidst growing protests for the restoration of the ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

On Sunday, the coup government of Roberto Micheletti announced a forty-five-day decree that imposed sweeping restrictions on civil liberties, including banning unauthorized public meetings, allowing the government to shut down broadcasters, and giving police the authority to make arrests without warrants.

After congressional leaders warned they would not approve the decree, Micheletti gave a televised news conference Monday evening asking for, quote, “forgiveness from the Honduran people” and said he would lift the decree as, quote, “quickly as possible.”

Earlier that day, masked police officers and soldiers shut down two media outlets that have criticized the coup regime. Government forces also cordoned off a street to prevent a march of several hundred supporters of ousted President Zelaya.

Zelaya has remained inside the Brazilian embassy since defiantly returning to Honduras one week ago. The Micheletti government has now given Brazil a ten-day deadline to hand over Zelaya or face the embassy’s closure. The coup regime issued the threat as its soldiers continued to surround the embassy and limit the delivery of supplies. Brazil has rejected the ultimatum and says Zelaya will stay as long as he needs. Brazil’s representative to the Organization of American States, Ruy de Lima Casaes e Silva, warned of the severity of the crisis.

RUY DE LIMACASAES E SILVA: [translated] The situation in the embassy is a grave situation with a potential for drama. For that reason, the Brazilian government, by way of their foreign minister, solicited the UN Security Council to conduct a meeting to specifically deal with the insecurity of Brazil’s embassy in Tegucigalpa, especially as regards disrespecting the norms established in international charters regarding diplomatic missions.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: The coup regime on Monday refused entry to a delegation from the Organization of American States that had come to seek a negotiated solution to the crisis. Speaking in Washington, the US ambassador to the OAS, Lewis Amselem, criticized the coup regime’s decision but then turned around to issue a harsh condemnation of ousted Zelaya.

LEWISAMSELEM: We therefore call on all within Honduras and outside Honduras to avoid actions and pronouncements which foment unrest and violence. The return of President Zelaya to Honduras, absent an agreement, is irresponsible and foolish and serves neither the interests of the Honduran people nor of those seeking the peaceful reestablishment of the democratic order in Honduras.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: On Monday night, Zelaya addressed the United Nations General Assembly via a mobile phone that his foreign minister held up to the podium.

PRESIDENTMANUELZELAYA: [translated] My greetings to the United Nations. My greetings to the United Nations. Anybody who had any doubt that a dictatorship is taking hold of my country, now with what has happened in the last ninety-three days of repression, I think that any of those doubts that might have subsisted are dispelled. But besides being subject to a coup d’état, Honduras is being subjected to a fascist rule, which is suppressing the rights of its citizens and which is oppressing the Honduran people.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: We go now to the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where we’re joined via Democracy Now! video stream by Andrés Conteris. He is the Program on the Americas director for Nonviolence International and also works at Democracy Now! en Español. He has been inside the Brazilian embassy for the past week.

We’re also joined from Washington, DC by Dr. Luther Castillo. He’s an indigenous physician from the Atlantic Coast of Honduras. He founded the first hospital and health center in that region. He is also secretary of communications for the National Resistance Front Against the Coup in Honduras. Shortly before the coup, he had been named director of International Cooperation in the Honduran Foreign Ministry.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! First, we’re going to go to Andrés Conteris. He’s joining us on the telephone, actually, from the — inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. Andrés, welcome to Democracy Now!

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: It’s a pleasure, Sharif.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: Can you start off by telling us what exactly is happening right now inside the embassy? What do you see outside? Are soldiers outside the embassy?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: Yes, there are many soldiers right outside the embassy. There are some hundreds, but the visible right outside here are probably a dozen. This place has been militarized since just over a week ago, right after the return of President Zelaya to Honduras. The repression was immediately felt in the very, very violent eviction that happened exactly one week ago this morning. Over 500 revelers who were dancing in the street were brutally repressed by the soldiers. Tear gas was used, and that tear gas completely filled the embassy here.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: And Andrés, you’ve been there for a week now. We’ve heard reports of a sound weapon being used, similar to the one that we reported on used in Pittsburgh at the G-20. Can you confirm or deny that?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: That weapon having to do with audio definitely was used: a very sharp, piercing noise that really, really causes deep, deep distress. Other weapons have been used. I have not been able to confirm gases used after the tear gas incident, but other people did feel a attack by gas during this past week.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: And the coup regime has given the Brazilian embassy ten days to hand over Manuel Zelaya or grant him asylum in Brazil. Brazil has denied this, has refused to do so. What is President Zelaya saying right now about what’s happening?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: What President Zelaya is saying is that the international community needs to follow up with the declarations that were approved by both the United Nations, the OAS, as well as the San Jose Accord. He is very open to dialogue in that framework of those documents. Every single one of them says that he needs to be restated — reinstated as the president, the democratically elected leader of Honduras. And this coup regime here is not willing to do that.

Other things that he says clearly are having to do with the incredible amount of repression that is being felt around Honduras. Just yesterday, they buried a young woman named Wendy, who died as a result of the tear gas a week ago here in the embassy area. She had asthma and suffered from that, was hospitalized and then later died. She’s just one of many, many who have passed away as a result of the brutality of the Micheletti regime.

And what is really disconcerting is that the United States, through the Obama administration, has not said one word condemning the human rights atrocities here, in spite of the fact that they have been very, very well documented by the most recognized human rights organizations in the world. Congressman Grijalva of Arizona wrote a very clear letter to Obama documenting all of this, and there has been no response by this administration in terms of publicly condemning the human rights violations by this regime.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: And speaking of the US response, last night we heard possibly the harshest condemnation from a top diplomat, a US top diplomat, Lewis Amselem, the representative to the OAS. He called Zelaya’s return “irresponsible and foolish.” Your response?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: This comment by Ambassador Amselem comes a week after Hillary Clinton clearly welcomed President Zelaya back to Honduras. So we’re seeing a double face in terms of the policy from the Obama administration in terms of, is he welcome, or is it foolish for him to have returned.

One thing to know about the background of Ambassador Amselem is that he was with the SOUTHCOM, the Pentagon’s organization in Latin America. And the military policy with regard to Honduras has to be mentioned, because it’s very key. The US continues to train Honduran soldiers at the School of the Americas, in spite of the fact that they have said that ties had been severed. Honduras remains invited to the military maneuvers called PANAMAX 2009, which were twenty-one countries invited from September 11th to September 22nd. And Honduras was on the list. The Pentagon never withdrew them. And the only reason they didn’t participate is because other countries in South America refused to go to the maneuvers if Honduras was going to remain as participating.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: And this issue of the crackdown on civil liberties, Micheletti issued a decree on Sunday, a forty-five-day decree, with sweeping restrictions on civil liberties. He has pledged to reverse that, following congressional leaders not giving him support. But this did — the day after he issued the decree, he closed down two media stations, one of them being Radio Globo, that I believe President Zelaya has frequently done interviews on. What has been the effect of this inside the embassy?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: Inside the embassy, what we have been feeling is a terrorism on the part of this regime as they issued this decree, which really defines them outright as an absolute dictatorship. Constitutional guarantees in the Honduran Constitution defend the right to gather, defend the right to movement and thinking and freedom of expression by the media. All of these were the articles that were suspended by this decree imposed by Micheletti, and because of pressure from the Congress, as well as international pressure, he was forced to back away from that. However, it did really cause a chill here at the embassy, as well as around the country.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: We’re also joined in Washington, DC by Dr. Luther Castillo.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Dr. Castillo. You are the secretary of communications for the National Resistance Front Against the Coup in Honduras. You’re also a physician in Honduras, running a hospital there. First, tell us why you’re in Washington, DC.

DR. LUTHERCASTILLO: Well, good morning to everyone.

We are here in Washington, DC, trying to meet some human rights organizations and contact with some Congress representatives like Congressman Grijalva, who has been writing a great letter addressed to the President Obama to take immediately action on this violation of human right that is happening in Honduras every day.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: And you have called for a boycott of the elections in November? Why?

DR. LUTHERCASTILLO: Because we recognize that this election in November is an illegal election, who are going to be running in November. One of the strategies that the de facto government is trying to do in this illegal election is to do a continuation of a coup d’état in Honduras. Then all the issues that will be addressing by this de facto government is an illegal issue, then that makes that election in November to be illegal then. Our organization, that’s the national committee against the coup d’état, who is inside there, all the civil organization, indigenous organizations, unions and other organization in Honduras, are against this election in November, and we consider it illegal.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: Now, Dr. Castillo, you founded the first hospital on the Atlantic Coast region in Honduras. Talk about what that hospital was providing and what has happened since then, since the coup.

DR. LUTHERCASTILLO: Then this hospital was founded by Garifuna doctors who was training in Cuba. Then we returned back to our community to give healthcare to all people that didn’t have healthcare before. Then we started to build the hospital with our own community. And with President Zelaya, we signed an agreement how to give support and sustainability to this process, where we have been attending more than 300,000 people for free in the area.

And now the de facto government have been cut and have been — deny the agreement that we signed before with President Zelaya. Then that make our hospital now without helps to attend all those people, who are in the deep mountain and the more forest area and the department of Colon and Gracias a Dios, near to La Mosquitia, then who really need our help in those areas.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: And why has the coup regime tried to take over the hospital? Have they given you a reason for this?

DR. LUTHERCASTILLO: They just, I think — they just give us — tell us that we have to — we are working in the community as illegals there, and they just send us a new agreement to sign that new agreement, who didn’t recognize our doctors who are working there in the area with us. They don’t even give us any reason why they are doing that.

Then we are accustomed to fight against that. We live in Honduras. We really know what the discrimination that we have been facing as a poor people, as the Garifuna people in Honduras then. We decided, with our community and our doctors, to be there, to stay there and keep looking for solidarity and work, continue helping our people there.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: And finally, Dr. Castillo, you, yourself, personally have been targeted by the regime. How are you returning to Honduras, and how are you surviving there?

DR. LUTHERCASTILLO: Then I will be returning back. We just came here to do this work with — that national committee give us to do here, because we have to be there with our people, fighting, and we have to be there with our people, demonstrating peacefully in the street that we are against that regime of brutality that is happening in Honduras.

One of the real things that we like to clarify that we have been listening to the — some of the representative of the OA — Organization of States of America, I think this issue is concern to Honduran people, you know, to appoint if he’s responsible or irresponsible, that action that President Zelaya took. We want to clarify that President Zelaya is the only president who was be elected for us as Honduran people. He’s the only constitutional president of Honduras. Then we decide and we think, as Honduran people, that it’s a responsible action of President Zelaya to return back to our country. He’s a Honduran, and we elect him as a president. Then I think that issue is concerning us, and we don’t think that it’s a irresponsible action that he is taking right now. Then we want him to return to Honduras. And when some people are talking about what is concerning to the peace of Honduran people, we have been more than ninety days in the street demanding the immediately return for President Zelaya. Now he’s in the country. I think we congratulate that action, that courage of President Zelaya to return back to Honduras. That represent one of the step that we have to take to bring peace to our country.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: And what would you like to see the United States to be doing? What would you like to see President Obama to be doing regarding Honduras?

DR. LUTHERCASTILLO: Then we would like to see President Obama condemning all these violation of human right that have been happening in Honduras. We would like to see President Obama condemning and talking about all those people that have been killing in the street, all those young people who have been killing in the street, assassination. We would like to see President Obama talking to condemn all those women who — what military have been violating in the street of Honduras. And we would like to be — President Obama pushing more pressure on the — and the economic sanction to those [inaudible] family who are supporting the coup attack in Honduras. And we would like to see President Obama declaring definitely this issue as a military coup attack in Honduras.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: And finally, Andrés Conteris, any final words from inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: The United States has been having a trade embargo against Cuba for decades. And if they would even consider an economic embargo against this regime, this coup would end. That’s because there’s more than 70 to 75 percent of Honduran trade is with the United States, and they could not withstand a trade embargo. So the US has arrows in its quiver that it could use to end this crisis, but it is choosing not to do so. And the US people must rise up and pressure the Obama administration to do more for Honduras and human rights here.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: Andrés Conteris, thank you very much for joining us. He’s the Program on the Americas director for Nonviolence International, also works at Democracy Now! en Español. And special thanks also to Dr. Luther Castillo. He’s an indigenous physician from the Atlantic Coast of Honduras, secretary of communications for the National Resistance Front Against the Coup in Honduras.]]>

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400Report from Honduras: Ousted President Manuel Zelaya Returns to Honduras in Defiance of Coup Governmenthttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/22/report_from_honduras_ousted_president_manuel
tag:democracynow.org,2009-09-22:en/story/e659b3 SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has made a dramatic return to his country nearly three months after the military coup that forced him into exile. On Monday, Zelaya reappeared in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa, taking refuge in the Brazilian embassy. Speaking from the embassy’s roof, Zelaya said he had arrived after a lengthy trip, traveling sometimes by foot to avoid detection.
PRESIDENT MANUEL ZELAYA : [translated] I had to travel for fifteen hours, sometimes walking, other times marching in different areas in the middle of the night, because I wanted to celebrate the country&#8217;s independence day with the Honduran people. Those who believe that governing was something easy have made a mistake. To govern is something serious. Governing requires talent, dedication and love for the people.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : Zelaya wouldn’t provide specifics, but it’s unlikely he could have returned without help from elements of the Honduran military or intelligence services. That prospect could signify a further setback for the Honduran coup regime, which has relied on military support to defy internal unrest and global isolation.
The head of the coup regime, Roberto Micheletti, initially dismissed reports of Zelaya’s return as, quote, &quot;media terrorism.&quot; But as thousands of Zelaya supporters descended on the Brazilian embassy, Micheletti imposed a national curfew and took to the airwaves. Flanked by his cabinet and top military leaders, Micheletti called on Brazil to hand over Zelaya for arrest.
ROBERTO MICHELETTI : [translated] It is not clear why Mr. Zelaya has returned to Honduras at this time. Only he knows this. But I cannot reach another conclusion other than he is here to continue hampering the celebrations of our elections next November 29th, as he has done so far, as well as his followers, for a few weeks now.
I made a call to the government of Brazil so that they respect the judicial order against Mr. Zelaya and hand him over to the authorities of Honduras. The state of Honduras is committed to respecting the rights of Mr. Zelaya to the mentioned process. The eyes of the world are placed on Brazil and also on Honduras. Let&#8217;s not allow passions of a few stain the reputation and image of our people.
AMY GOODMAN : Zelaya’s supporters are reportedly planning to march on the palace later today. Here in the US, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged both sides to engage in dialogue.
HILLARY CLINTON : It’s imperative that dialogue begin, that there be a channel of communication between President Zelaya and the de facto regime in Honduras. And it’s also imperative that the return of President Zelaya does not lead to any conflict or violence, but instead that everyone act in a peaceful way to try to find some common ground. Once again, the Costa Ricans will be using their good offices to try to encourage that to occur.
AMY GOODMAN : Clinton was speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, where she met with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. After the meeting, Arias said he’d be willing to travel to Honduras to resume his efforts at brokering a negotiated solution.
PRESIDENT OSCAR ARIAS : I think this is the best &mdash; the best opportunity, the best time, now that Zelaya is back in his country, for the two parties to sign the San José accord. It’s all we have on the table. There is no B plan. And when we wrote this San José accord, it was after listening to everybody. We took suggestions from each of the parties.
I would be willing to go, but if both sides &mdash; if both parties ask me to &mdash; to go to Tegucigalpa, I certainly would be more than pleased to go and see what I can do.
AMY GOODMAN : The Nobel Peace laureate, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.
We now go directly to the Brazilian embassy, inside, in Tegucigalpa to Andres Conteris, who works with us at Democracy Now! and on the Program on the Americas director for Nonviolence International.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! , Andres. What’s happening right now?
ANDRES CONTERIS : Amy, good to talk with you.
About forty minutes ago, there was a very violent removal by the military and police of over 500 protesters who were outside the embassy dancing and rejoicing and celebrating all night. I was able to see them in their incredible, incredible spirit of jubilation as they expressed that since the news arrived that President Zelaya was returning to the country. Then, about forty minutes ago, there was a massive, massive tear gas attack and a violent removal of all of the over 500 people in front of the embassy.
I’m inside the embassy with about 150 people who are inside. There was no direct attack against the embassy itself, but the tear gas did enter, and it affected every single one of us inside the embassy. I’m now in the room where the President slept, and I’m with the First Lady nearby. Everyone, everyone was affected by this tear gas attack. But fortunately, there are no permanent injuries. We’re not aware of any injuries, but I’m sure there were many of those who were protesting and celebrating outside the embassy.
AMY GOODMAN : Andres, can you tell us how did President Zelaya return to Honduras?
ANDRES CONTERIS : Reports are, Amy &mdash; and he was asked directly, and he answered in a very general way, but the reports are that he flew from Nicaragua to El Salvador and then reached the border there at a place called El Amatillo and there entered into the trunk of a car and crossed about fifty &mdash; I’m sorry, about twenty police barricades and was never detected. He drove straight to &mdash; his driver took him straight to the Brazilian embassy.
Initial reports were that the President was in Honduras and that he was at the United Nations headquarters. So the initial rally of celebration went there to the United Nations. There were thousands and thousands of people there rejoicing. And then the word came that he was at the Brazilian embassy. And then we transferred that celebration here.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : And Andres, why did the Brazilians take him in, have him have refuge in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa?
ANDRES CONTERIS : It’s very clear that Brazil has been a very strong advocate of President Zelaya during this entire crisis. And because of the power and the symbolism of the strength of South America and Brazil being the strongest and largest of those countries, it’s clear that I think President Zelaya decided that this was the place that it was best to come to. And when he arrived, they of course opened the doors. The Brazilian authorities report that they did not know ahead of time that he was coming here, but he was welcomed when he came. And his family was reunited here in the embassy for the first time after eighty-six days of being separated.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : And the President &mdash; the head of the coup regime, Roberto Micheletti, has continued his call for Zelaya&#8217;s arrest. What does President Zelaya say right now about that?
ANDRES CONTERIS : President Zelaya speaks very positively, in a very reconciling mode. He does not even take seriously what coup regime leader Micheletti is saying. Micheletti is saying that there’s a jail space waiting for President Zelaya. However, President Zelaya is really focusing on the way to truly resolve this crisis by seeking mediation.
Today, it’s hopefully expected that Mr. Insulza, the head of the OAS , will arrive. However, they have closed the airports, and it’s not certain if they will allow the plane to land with Mr. Insulza from the OAS .
AMY GOODMAN : Andres Conteris is speaking to us from inside the embassy in Tegucigalpa, the Brazilian embassy. Roberto Micheletti says that he wants Brazil to hand over the ousted president. Andres, is there a response from Zelaya on that request?
ANDRES CONTERIS : In terms of that request, no, there was no direct response. It’s really treating this coup regime as a nonentity, so much as possible, and not recognizing their authority. Many who were in the streets heard about the curfew that was imposed at 4:00 p.m. yesterday afternoon and held &mdash; and was enforced all night, and they did not respond to it, because they believe that President Zelaya is the one president, and he is the only one who can give an order for a curfew. And so, they continued to celebrate in the streets.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS : Andres is joining us from inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. We&#8217;re also joined from Washington, DC by Mark Weisbrot. He’s co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and president of Just Foreign Policy. He’s written extensively on the Honduran crisis and is a longtime analyst of Latin American affairs.
Mark, could you explain the significance of Zelaya&#8217;s return, particularly coming on the eve of the United Nations General Assembly?
MARK WEISBROT : Yes. Well, I think it will make a big difference. You know, there’s been a big gap from the beginning, since the coup on June 28th. There’s been a big gap between the United States and the rest of the world on this situation. You know, the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the UNASUR , the Union of South American Nations, they all said right away that they wanted an immediate and unconditional return of the elected president, Zelaya. And the United States has never really said that. In fact, the Arias accords put all kinds of conditions on his return, including incorporating the people who led the coup into his government and moving the elections forward. And in fact, as Andres mentioned, you know, Brazil has been a strong supporter of Zelaya, and the foreign minister of Brazil said a couple months ago &mdash; he complained to Hillary Clinton that these conditions were placed in the Arias agreement, that, you know, this was not what the Organization of American States wanted or the United Nations or anyone else. So he said this publicly. And so, there’s always been this big gap, but the administration has been able to paper it over, because there hasn’t been much attention on Honduras.
And so, now, with the General Assembly and the attention focused by Zelaya&#8217;s dramatic return, Obama is going to have to choose sides more than they have in the past. They’ve been very &mdash; this administration has been very ambivalent. They&#8217;ve gone back and forth, you know, between saying that, you know, he should be restored and then saying really almost the opposite. And on August 4th, they sent a letter, for example, to President Lugar [Senator Lugar], where they backed off quite a bit from supporting Zelaya.
And, you know, Zelaya has been here six times since he was overthrown, here in Washington, and President Obama has not met with him once, even though he’s gotten requests from people who are very close friends and allies of his and Democratic members of Congress.
And so, these are the kind of signals, mixed signals, that this government has sent to the leaders of the coup, and that has strengthened their resolve all the way along. And they&#8217;re very stubborn right now, for example. It’s going to take a lot more pressure to get them out of there, a lot more, both international and domestic, from within the United States. There’s going to have to be a lot more pressure on the Obama administration to actually force them to leave.
AMY GOODMAN : And exactly what could the Obama administration do if it was committed to preserving the democratically elected leader Zelaya? What is the relationship the US has with Honduras?
MARK WEISBROT : Oh, there’s quite a bit more they could do. First of all, on August 11th, sixteen members of Congress sent a letter to President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and asking them to freeze the assets of the coup leaders, and even the government &mdash; they can also freeze their assets. You know, when Aristide, President Aristide of Haiti, was overthrown the first time, George Bush, the first, actually froze some of the assets of the dictatorship and gave it to the government in exile, to President Aristide. And this was, you know, a Republican president who actually &mdash; that government actually supported the &mdash; or was involved in the coup initially. And so, this is &mdash; so this is a minimum they could do.
They could &mdash; you know, they could put all kinds of pressure that they haven’t put. And again, you see our Secretary of State, she’s trying to say, well, both sides should do this, both sides &mdash; she even said last night that she supported the curfew that this government has put, you know, on people to prevent them from peacefully assembling. And so, this is the kind of thing.
And, you know, there has not been one word from this administration about the human &mdash; the massive human rights violations committed by this dictatorship, the thousands of arbitrary arrests and detentions, the beatings. People have been shot and actually killed at demonstrations. These human rights abuses have been denounced by Human Rights Watch, by Amnesty International, by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights of the Organization of American States, by Honduran human rights groups, by Europe. And nothing &mdash; nothing &mdash; has come out of this administration. I think that really says a lot. That tells you how much this government has not wanted to undermine the dictatorship in Honduras. That’s what’s going to have to change. And I think there&#8217;s going to be more international pressure, and hopefully domestic pressure, as well, to change that.
AMY GOODMAN : Mark Weisbrot, to the surprise of the coup regime, Zelaya’s return to Honduras, he’s now in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. But if he were in New York and wanted to speak, address the UN General Assembly, what would happen at the United Nations? Who would they recognize?
MARK WEISBROT : Well, they would recognize him, and he would get enormous support. And that was, I’m sure, his other plan: if he hadn’t gone back to Honduras, he would have spoken there. But this, I think, is much more powerful. I mean, that would have gotten maybe, you know, a few lines here and there in the news. This now forces it to the world attention. You&#8217;re going to see a lot of support in the United Nations and from various heads of state for Zelaya, a lot more pressure &mdash; and here in Congress, too, by the way.
And if your viewers want to do anything, they can contact their members of Congress, and they &mdash; you know, there&#8217;s another letter going to come from members of Congress stating that Zelaya should return. And also, you know, the School of the Americas Watch has asked for people to write to and call the State Department. So, you know, there&#8217;s going to be more and more pressure on them.
And the question is, you know, will they really do what needs to be done to get rid of this government? Because the government there still has their friends here. You know, you had Lanny Davis on the show. They have influential people. They have the Republicans, and they have, you know, a lot of interest in this government, including the military, wants to keep their base there, you know? And there’s all these forces here that don’t really want Zelaya to go back, or if they’re willing to have him go back, they don’t want him to go back as a victor. You know, that’s another thing that they&#8217;re very worried about, that he comes off winning, and their friends in the government, in the de facto regime, end up losing. So, again, it’s going to take a lot of pressure, but that pressure has definitely gone up quite a bit with Zelaya’s return.
AMY GOODMAN : Mark Weisbrot, I want to go back to Andres in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. Andres Conteris, who’s with Democracy Now! en Español, Democracy Now! in Spanish, he is right near the President now, who’s talking with reporters. Andres, describe what’s happening.
ANDRES CONTERIS : Yes, Amy, I’m right here with the President, and he is speaking. I’m going to let you hear his voice and try to interpret a little bit.
[translating President Zelaya] He “will obligate this dictatorship to enter into dialogue with us. Just the way that they attacked my house and they brutally kidnapped me, this is the way that they are attacking us now even today.”
The President is taking a drink of water now, and we’re going to ask him a question. It’s not possible to get a question in right now, but we will just listen to his response to other questions.
AMY GOODMAN : Andres Conteris is asking President Zelaya a question.
ANDRES CONTERIS : [translating President Zelaya] “That the US should respond and respect the OAS charter. The United States should call for a meeting, an emergency meeting, of the United Nations Security Council. The United States should take every type of trade sanction measure in order to pressure this regime now in power in Honduras.”
That’s the questions I was able to ask Mr. President.
AMY GOODMAN : Andres Conteris, thanks so much for being with us. We will continue to follow this story, bring you more on this tomorrow.
Again, the latest news is that the President, the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, has returned to Honduras after three months, not exactly clear how he made it over the border, but he said he walked, he traveled, not clear who aided him in this, and then ended up within the Brazilian embassy. The coup regime leader, Roberto Micheletti, is demanding of Brazil to turn over Zelaya so that he can arrest him.
Andres Conteris, with Nonviolence International and Democracy Now! en Español, is standing next to the President right now in the Brazilian embassy.SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has made a dramatic return to his country nearly three months after the military coup that forced him into exile. On Monday, Zelaya reappeared in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa, taking refuge in the Brazilian embassy. Speaking from the embassy’s roof, Zelaya said he had arrived after a lengthy trip, traveling sometimes by foot to avoid detection.

PRESIDENTMANUELZELAYA: [translated] I had to travel for fifteen hours, sometimes walking, other times marching in different areas in the middle of the night, because I wanted to celebrate the country’s independence day with the Honduran people. Those who believe that governing was something easy have made a mistake. To govern is something serious. Governing requires talent, dedication and love for the people.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: Zelaya wouldn’t provide specifics, but it’s unlikely he could have returned without help from elements of the Honduran military or intelligence services. That prospect could signify a further setback for the Honduran coup regime, which has relied on military support to defy internal unrest and global isolation.

The head of the coup regime, Roberto Micheletti, initially dismissed reports of Zelaya’s return as, quote, "media terrorism." But as thousands of Zelaya supporters descended on the Brazilian embassy, Micheletti imposed a national curfew and took to the airwaves. Flanked by his cabinet and top military leaders, Micheletti called on Brazil to hand over Zelaya for arrest.

ROBERTOMICHELETTI: [translated] It is not clear why Mr. Zelaya has returned to Honduras at this time. Only he knows this. But I cannot reach another conclusion other than he is here to continue hampering the celebrations of our elections next November 29th, as he has done so far, as well as his followers, for a few weeks now.

I made a call to the government of Brazil so that they respect the judicial order against Mr. Zelaya and hand him over to the authorities of Honduras. The state of Honduras is committed to respecting the rights of Mr. Zelaya to the mentioned process. The eyes of the world are placed on Brazil and also on Honduras. Let’s not allow passions of a few stain the reputation and image of our people.

AMYGOODMAN: Zelaya’s supporters are reportedly planning to march on the palace later today. Here in the US, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged both sides to engage in dialogue.

HILLARYCLINTON: It’s imperative that dialogue begin, that there be a channel of communication between President Zelaya and the de facto regime in Honduras. And it’s also imperative that the return of President Zelaya does not lead to any conflict or violence, but instead that everyone act in a peaceful way to try to find some common ground. Once again, the Costa Ricans will be using their good offices to try to encourage that to occur.

AMYGOODMAN: Clinton was speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, where she met with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. After the meeting, Arias said he’d be willing to travel to Honduras to resume his efforts at brokering a negotiated solution.

PRESIDENTOSCARARIAS: I think this is the best — the best opportunity, the best time, now that Zelaya is back in his country, for the two parties to sign the San José accord. It’s all we have on the table. There is no B plan. And when we wrote this San José accord, it was after listening to everybody. We took suggestions from each of the parties.

I would be willing to go, but if both sides — if both parties ask me to — to go to Tegucigalpa, I certainly would be more than pleased to go and see what I can do.

We now go directly to the Brazilian embassy, inside, in Tegucigalpa to Andres Conteris, who works with us at Democracy Now! and on the Program on the Americas director for Nonviolence International.

We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Andres. What’s happening right now?

ANDRESCONTERIS: Amy, good to talk with you.

About forty minutes ago, there was a very violent removal by the military and police of over 500 protesters who were outside the embassy dancing and rejoicing and celebrating all night. I was able to see them in their incredible, incredible spirit of jubilation as they expressed that since the news arrived that President Zelaya was returning to the country. Then, about forty minutes ago, there was a massive, massive tear gas attack and a violent removal of all of the over 500 people in front of the embassy.

I’m inside the embassy with about 150 people who are inside. There was no direct attack against the embassy itself, but the tear gas did enter, and it affected every single one of us inside the embassy. I’m now in the room where the President slept, and I’m with the First Lady nearby. Everyone, everyone was affected by this tear gas attack. But fortunately, there are no permanent injuries. We’re not aware of any injuries, but I’m sure there were many of those who were protesting and celebrating outside the embassy.

AMYGOODMAN: Andres, can you tell us how did President Zelaya return to Honduras?

ANDRESCONTERIS: Reports are, Amy — and he was asked directly, and he answered in a very general way, but the reports are that he flew from Nicaragua to El Salvador and then reached the border there at a place called El Amatillo and there entered into the trunk of a car and crossed about fifty — I’m sorry, about twenty police barricades and was never detected. He drove straight to — his driver took him straight to the Brazilian embassy.

Initial reports were that the President was in Honduras and that he was at the United Nations headquarters. So the initial rally of celebration went there to the United Nations. There were thousands and thousands of people there rejoicing. And then the word came that he was at the Brazilian embassy. And then we transferred that celebration here.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: And Andres, why did the Brazilians take him in, have him have refuge in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa?

ANDRESCONTERIS: It’s very clear that Brazil has been a very strong advocate of President Zelaya during this entire crisis. And because of the power and the symbolism of the strength of South America and Brazil being the strongest and largest of those countries, it’s clear that I think President Zelaya decided that this was the place that it was best to come to. And when he arrived, they of course opened the doors. The Brazilian authorities report that they did not know ahead of time that he was coming here, but he was welcomed when he came. And his family was reunited here in the embassy for the first time after eighty-six days of being separated.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: And the President — the head of the coup regime, Roberto Micheletti, has continued his call for Zelaya’s arrest. What does President Zelaya say right now about that?

ANDRESCONTERIS: President Zelaya speaks very positively, in a very reconciling mode. He does not even take seriously what coup regime leader Micheletti is saying. Micheletti is saying that there’s a jail space waiting for President Zelaya. However, President Zelaya is really focusing on the way to truly resolve this crisis by seeking mediation.

Today, it’s hopefully expected that Mr. Insulza, the head of the OAS, will arrive. However, they have closed the airports, and it’s not certain if they will allow the plane to land with Mr. Insulza from the OAS.

AMYGOODMAN: Andres Conteris is speaking to us from inside the embassy in Tegucigalpa, the Brazilian embassy. Roberto Micheletti says that he wants Brazil to hand over the ousted president. Andres, is there a response from Zelaya on that request?

ANDRESCONTERIS: In terms of that request, no, there was no direct response. It’s really treating this coup regime as a nonentity, so much as possible, and not recognizing their authority. Many who were in the streets heard about the curfew that was imposed at 4:00 p.m. yesterday afternoon and held — and was enforced all night, and they did not respond to it, because they believe that President Zelaya is the one president, and he is the only one who can give an order for a curfew. And so, they continued to celebrate in the streets.

SHARIFABDELKOUDDOUS: Andres is joining us from inside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. We’re also joined from Washington, DC by Mark Weisbrot. He’s co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and president of Just Foreign Policy. He’s written extensively on the Honduran crisis and is a longtime analyst of Latin American affairs.

Mark, could you explain the significance of Zelaya’s return, particularly coming on the eve of the United Nations General Assembly?

MARKWEISBROT: Yes. Well, I think it will make a big difference. You know, there’s been a big gap from the beginning, since the coup on June 28th. There’s been a big gap between the United States and the rest of the world on this situation. You know, the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations, they all said right away that they wanted an immediate and unconditional return of the elected president, Zelaya. And the United States has never really said that. In fact, the Arias accords put all kinds of conditions on his return, including incorporating the people who led the coup into his government and moving the elections forward. And in fact, as Andres mentioned, you know, Brazil has been a strong supporter of Zelaya, and the foreign minister of Brazil said a couple months ago — he complained to Hillary Clinton that these conditions were placed in the Arias agreement, that, you know, this was not what the Organization of American States wanted or the United Nations or anyone else. So he said this publicly. And so, there’s always been this big gap, but the administration has been able to paper it over, because there hasn’t been much attention on Honduras.

And so, now, with the General Assembly and the attention focused by Zelaya’s dramatic return, Obama is going to have to choose sides more than they have in the past. They’ve been very — this administration has been very ambivalent. They’ve gone back and forth, you know, between saying that, you know, he should be restored and then saying really almost the opposite. And on August 4th, they sent a letter, for example, to President Lugar [Senator Lugar], where they backed off quite a bit from supporting Zelaya.

And, you know, Zelaya has been here six times since he was overthrown, here in Washington, and President Obama has not met with him once, even though he’s gotten requests from people who are very close friends and allies of his and Democratic members of Congress.

And so, these are the kind of signals, mixed signals, that this government has sent to the leaders of the coup, and that has strengthened their resolve all the way along. And they’re very stubborn right now, for example. It’s going to take a lot more pressure to get them out of there, a lot more, both international and domestic, from within the United States. There’s going to have to be a lot more pressure on the Obama administration to actually force them to leave.

AMYGOODMAN: And exactly what could the Obama administration do if it was committed to preserving the democratically elected leader Zelaya? What is the relationship the US has with Honduras?

MARKWEISBROT: Oh, there’s quite a bit more they could do. First of all, on August 11th, sixteen members of Congress sent a letter to President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and asking them to freeze the assets of the coup leaders, and even the government — they can also freeze their assets. You know, when Aristide, President Aristide of Haiti, was overthrown the first time, George Bush, the first, actually froze some of the assets of the dictatorship and gave it to the government in exile, to President Aristide. And this was, you know, a Republican president who actually — that government actually supported the — or was involved in the coup initially. And so, this is — so this is a minimum they could do.

They could — you know, they could put all kinds of pressure that they haven’t put. And again, you see our Secretary of State, she’s trying to say, well, both sides should do this, both sides — she even said last night that she supported the curfew that this government has put, you know, on people to prevent them from peacefully assembling. And so, this is the kind of thing.

And, you know, there has not been one word from this administration about the human — the massive human rights violations committed by this dictatorship, the thousands of arbitrary arrests and detentions, the beatings. People have been shot and actually killed at demonstrations. These human rights abuses have been denounced by Human Rights Watch, by Amnesty International, by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights of the Organization of American States, by Honduran human rights groups, by Europe. And nothing — nothing — has come out of this administration. I think that really says a lot. That tells you how much this government has not wanted to undermine the dictatorship in Honduras. That’s what’s going to have to change. And I think there’s going to be more international pressure, and hopefully domestic pressure, as well, to change that.

AMYGOODMAN: Mark Weisbrot, to the surprise of the coup regime, Zelaya’s return to Honduras, he’s now in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. But if he were in New York and wanted to speak, address the UN General Assembly, what would happen at the United Nations? Who would they recognize?

MARKWEISBROT: Well, they would recognize him, and he would get enormous support. And that was, I’m sure, his other plan: if he hadn’t gone back to Honduras, he would have spoken there. But this, I think, is much more powerful. I mean, that would have gotten maybe, you know, a few lines here and there in the news. This now forces it to the world attention. You’re going to see a lot of support in the United Nations and from various heads of state for Zelaya, a lot more pressure — and here in Congress, too, by the way.

And if your viewers want to do anything, they can contact their members of Congress, and they — you know, there’s another letter going to come from members of Congress stating that Zelaya should return. And also, you know, the School of the Americas Watch has asked for people to write to and call the State Department. So, you know, there’s going to be more and more pressure on them.

And the question is, you know, will they really do what needs to be done to get rid of this government? Because the government there still has their friends here. You know, you had Lanny Davis on the show. They have influential people. They have the Republicans, and they have, you know, a lot of interest in this government, including the military, wants to keep their base there, you know? And there’s all these forces here that don’t really want Zelaya to go back, or if they’re willing to have him go back, they don’t want him to go back as a victor. You know, that’s another thing that they’re very worried about, that he comes off winning, and their friends in the government, in the de facto regime, end up losing. So, again, it’s going to take a lot of pressure, but that pressure has definitely gone up quite a bit with Zelaya’s return.

AMYGOODMAN: Mark Weisbrot, I want to go back to Andres in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. Andres Conteris, who’s with Democracy Now! en Español, Democracy Now! in Spanish, he is right near the President now, who’s talking with reporters. Andres, describe what’s happening.

ANDRESCONTERIS: Yes, Amy, I’m right here with the President, and he is speaking. I’m going to let you hear his voice and try to interpret a little bit.

[translating President Zelaya] He “will obligate this dictatorship to enter into dialogue with us. Just the way that they attacked my house and they brutally kidnapped me, this is the way that they are attacking us now even today.”

The President is taking a drink of water now, and we’re going to ask him a question. It’s not possible to get a question in right now, but we will just listen to his response to other questions.

AMYGOODMAN: Andres Conteris is asking President Zelaya a question.

ANDRESCONTERIS: [translating President Zelaya] “That the US should respond and respect the OAS charter. The United States should call for a meeting, an emergency meeting, of the United Nations Security Council. The United States should take every type of trade sanction measure in order to pressure this regime now in power in Honduras.”

That’s the questions I was able to ask Mr. President.

AMYGOODMAN: Andres Conteris, thanks so much for being with us. We will continue to follow this story, bring you more on this tomorrow.

Again, the latest news is that the President, the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, has returned to Honduras after three months, not exactly clear how he made it over the border, but he said he walked, he traveled, not clear who aided him in this, and then ended up within the Brazilian embassy. The coup regime leader, Roberto Micheletti, is demanding of Brazil to turn over Zelaya so that he can arrest him.

Andres Conteris, with Nonviolence International and Democracy Now! en Español, is standing next to the President right now in the Brazilian embassy.]]>

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400Despite Pledge to Cut Military Ties to Coup Regime, US Continues to Train Honduran Soldiers at School of Americashttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/21/despite_pledge_to_cut_military_ties
tag:democracynow.org,2009-07-21:en/story/f805fa AMY GOODMAN : We turn now to Honduras, where the coup regime is defying growing international pressure to restore ousted President Manuel Zelaya. On Monday, the European Union announced the suspension of over $92 million in aid. The move came one day after the regime rejected a proposal for Zelaya’s return but with new limits on his authority and under a power-sharing government. Presidential elections would also have been moved up to October. Zelaya accepted the entire plan, which was proposed by mediator Oscar Arias, the Costa Rican president, but the de facto coup government said it won’t accept Zelaya’s reinstatement under any condition. After the talks broke down, Arias warned Honduras is on the brink of &quot;civil war and bloodshed.&quot;
Zelaya has vowed to return with or without an agreement. In Honduras, his supporters continue daily protests, leading up to a two-day national strike set to begin Thursday. On Monday, hundreds marched near the Honduran Congress.
EDGARDO VALERIANO : [translated] He will come as the circumstances allow it. As he said himself, it could even be this week. There needs to be enough time for the mediation by President Arias to have an effect and for the oligarchy to retreat and for diplomatic pressure from the United States and other civilized countries to force them to realize that the path to military coups has fallen away.
AMY GOODMAN : The Obama administration has also put new pressure on the coup government. On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned the installed Honduran President Roberto Micheletti and warned of, quote, &quot;long-term consequences&quot; if ongoing talks fail. It was the Obama administration’s highest-level contact with the coup regime so far. The US has so far suspended $18 million in aid but could withhold another $180 million.
Although the US appears to be increasing diplomatic pressure on Honduras, questions are being raised about its vow to cut military ties. The National Catholic Reporter has revealed at least two Honduran army officers are still receiving military training in the United States. The officers are currently enrolled at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, known as WHINSEC , formerly known as the School of the Americas, at Fort Benning, Georgia. That’s the facility that has a long record of training Latin American military officers involved in human rights abuses. Six Honduran military officials linked to the coup have trained at Fort Benning, including the coup’s military leader, General Romeo Orlando Vásquez Velásquez.
For more, I’m joined by three guests. James Hodge and Linda Cooper broke the story on the ongoing military training for the National Catholic Reporter , also co-authors of the book Disturbing the Peace: The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas . James Hodge and Linda Cooper join us from Columbus, Ohio. And here in the firehouse studio, Nikolas Kozloff, journalist and author of the book Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left . He has been writing extensively on the Honduran coup.
Let&#8217;s begin with our guests in Columbus. I’d like to begin with Linda Cooper. Tell us who the US military is training, has trained and is training today, of Honduran officers.
LINDA COOPER : The US military has trained, as you said, General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who was the commander of the army and instigated the coup; the general who’s in charge of the air force who facilitated the exile of Zelaya into Costa Rica; General Nelson Willy Mejía has been named minister of immigration, and he’s a graduate and a former instructor of the school who was also involved with Battalion 3-16, a known death squad; General Herberth Inestroza, the army&#8217;s top lawyer, who has admitted that the coup &mdash; who has admitted that when Zelaya was flown into exile, it was a crime, although he feels that it was justified; Lieutenant Colonel Ramiro Archaga, who’s the army&#8217;s director of public relations, who’s denied that the military is harassing protesters; Colonel Jorge Rodas Gamero, who’s a two-time graduate and the minister of security. Along with &mdash;-
AMY GOODMAN : Let me go to James Hodge for a minute. Talk about the significance of this training. I mean, it’s very significant what is happening right now. Clearly, the United States has -&mdash; holds a lot of sway over Honduras. The European Union just cut off all economic aid, and yet the United States has yet to do this, though they did say they’ve cut military ties, and yet we&#8217;re hearing this story.
JAMES HODGE : Yes. The Foreign Appropriations Act requires that the United States suspend all aid and training if a coup &mdash; if a country has undergone a coup. And President Obama said right after the coup that it was an illegal action and that President Zelaya was the democratically elected president. However, what we found is that the School of the Americas, now known as WHINSEC , has continued to train Honduran soldiers. And that gives a very strong signal to the Hondurans that the United States is sending mixed messages.
The military ties between Honduras and the United States go way back. Honduras used to be called the USS Honduras , because we used the country in many ways during the ’80s. President Reagan used it to launch the Contra war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
AMY GOODMAN : This was when the former US ambassador, right, John Negroponte was the US ambassador under Reagan to Honduras.
JAMES HODGE : That is correct. Ambassador Negroponte was there and basically turned a blind eye to all of the abuses by the Battalion 3-16 death squad. So, you know, you can’t underestimate the significance of this training, because if you &mdash;-
But it’s happened before. This is not a partisan issue. After Oscar Romero, who was the archbishop of San Salvador, in 1980 sent a letter to Jimmy Carter asking him to cut off aid to that country, he was assassinated. And Jimmy Carter turned on the aid very shortly thereafter. And the US church women who were also assassinated in that same year, the aid was cut off for a couple of weeks, and then it was turned back on.
So the problem is, is that the United States sends these mixed messages. On one hand, they condemn, you know, the coup in this situation, or they condemn the assassination of Bishop Romero, but it’s sort of like a wink and a nod. The aid continues, and the training continued, as it did in El Salvador in the 1980s.
AMY GOODMAN : How did you find out, James Hodge, that the US is continuing today to train Honduran soldiers, officers, at the School of the Americas, WHINSEC , in Fort Benning?
JAMES HODGE : Well, what happened was Father Roy Bourgeois, who had taken a fact-finding mission to Honduras about a week ago, he went to the military base there outside of Tegucigalpa and found that the -&mdash; nothing had changed. He talked to the officer, US officer, in charge there, and they said that, you know, everything was going on just as &mdash; just like normal.
So we decided to call WHINSEC and find out if that training was, in fact, going on. We talked to Lee Rials, who is the spokesman, and he said, “Yes, they’re in class right now.” And I was a little dumbfounded. And he said that, you know, they do not make the policy, that that’s a State Department, White House decision. And he said they just do &mdash; you know, nothing had changed there, either. The operations were going on, and no one had told them to &mdash; for them to cease.
He did, however, refuse to give us the names of the graduates, because since 2005 the Department of Defense has refused to release the names of the graduates after it was found out that they were admitting soldiers that had known human rights abuses. And so, supposedly, WHINSEC was supposed to be more transparent than the School of the Americas, but in fact it has not been.
AMY GOODMAN : And that’s not the only school, as they said.
JAMES HODGE : Yeah, we do train &mdash; I mean, the School of the Americas, or WHINSEC , trains soldiers in Spanish. So it’s the premier school to teach Latin American officers. However, there are other military bases in the United States that do train Latin American soldiers, but the training is done in English.
AMY GOODMAN : Nikolas Kozloff, you&#8217;ve been following the coup very closely right now. Talk about the latest developments and who you feel is behind it. And what exactly is the US role here? If the US cut off aid, economic and military aid, do you feel that would end the coup?
NIKOLAS KOZLOFF : I don’t think so. I think there’s this revolving door of Washington insiders that are supporting companies like Chiquita banana. I just wrote an article about Chiquita, formerly known as the United Fruit Company. And, you know, throughout history, Chiquita banana has had enormous sway and power over Central American nations.
And we know that prior to the coup d’état in Honduras, Chiquita was very unhappy about President Zelaya’s minimum wage decrees, because they said that this would cut into their profits and make it more expensive for them to export bananas and pineapple. And we know that they appealed to the Honduran Business Association, which was also opposed to Zelaya&#8217;s minimum wage provisions.
And we also &mdash; and what I find really interesting is that Chiquita is allied to a Washington law firm called Covington, which advises multinational corporations. And who is the vice chairman of Covington? None other than John Negroponte, who your previous guest mentioned in regards to the rampant human rights abuses that went on in Honduras throughout the 1980s. So I think that’s a really interesting connection.
AMY GOODMAN : You talk about the money and the support, Chiquita, then and now. It’s interesting, this is so reminiscent of the coup against the Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He wasn’t in office but a year, 1990, 1991, when he was ousted, and one of his first acts when he became president was to increase the minimum wage, as Zelaya has done.
NIKOLAS KOZLOFF : Well, right, and this is nothing new, as I point out in a recent article. Throughout the twentieth century, Chiquita, formerly known as United Fruit, was associated with some of the most backward, retrograde political and economic forces in Central America and indeed outside of Central America in such countries as Colombia. And we know that United Fruit Company played a very prominent role in the coup d’état against democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. And, you know, after that, that ushered in a very turbulent period in Guatemalan history, rampant human rights abuses, genocide against the indigenous people of Guatemala. And so, Guatemala is only now recovering from that.
But, you know, Chiquita has played a role in such countries as Guatemala and also Colombia, and now it maintains these ties to Covington, this law firm in Washington, to this day. And there is this revolving door, as I say before, of these Washington insiders. Covington, in turn, is tied to McLarty and Kissinger Associates, McLarty being President Clinton’s former Chief of Staff and envoy to Latin America, who was pushing the free trade agenda in Latin America, and Kissinger, who doesn’t even need an introduction. His ties to the coup in Chile in 1973 are well known. And so, it’s disturbing that there is this history of abuses in Central America throughout the twentieth century with Chiquita and the fruit companies, which continues to this day.
AMY GOODMAN : And then you have &mdash; well, we played Lanny Davis&#8217;s testimony before Congress, Lanny Davis, who we were speaking to Ken Silverstein about last week, the superb investigative reporter, about his representing the Chamber of Commerce, which is very much on the side of the coup regime right now. Lanny Davis is the former White House counsel for President Clinton.
NIKOLAS KOZLOFF : Right, and there’s these &mdash; there’s the circle of Clintonites that are still around. And as I mentioned before, you have Mack McLarty, who’s now associated with a law firm which is defending Chiquita. Also, as I point out in my recent article, you have the current Attorney General, Eric Holder, who was also Deputy Attorney General under Clinton, who defended Chiquita and its actions in Colombia, when Chiquita was allied to right-wing paramilitary death squads in the 1990s, was found guilty of paying off paramilitaries. And Eric Holder, the current Attorney General, who was also in the Clinton administration, was the lead counsel for Chiquita.
AMY GOODMAN : And explain the significance of what he was representing Chiquita around. I mean, we know the story of the Cincinnati Enquirer that did this remarkable exposé of Chiquita, which they were forced to apologize for, not because they were wrong, but because the reporter had gotten access to voicemail system within Chiquita, and they said that it was illegal how he had gained access to that voicemail system. But what he exposed was quite astounding.
NIKOLAS KOZLOFF : Right. Well, Chiquita claimed that it was merely paying protection money to the paramilitaries in Colombia. But the victims of the paramilitary violence in Colombia claim otherwise. They say that Chiquita was engaged in this systematic campaign to control banana production in Colombia and terrorize the population. And Chiquita was the only company in US history to be found guilty of paying bribes to a terrorist organization, as defined by the United States.
Eric Holder was the lead counsel defending Chiquita. He’s the top justice official in the United States with ties to this fruit company that was complicit in right-wing paramilitary violence.
AMY GOODMAN : So, the latest right now &mdash; the developments of the EU dropping support for Honduras, the talks with Oscar Arias breaking down. Though the elected president, Zelaya, has fully accepted what he proposed, the coup regime has said no. What’s going to happen? Oscar Arias said there could be a civil war, the President of Costa Rica and the Nobel Prize winner.
NIKOLAS KOZLOFF : Well, I don&#8217;t really &mdash; I don’t see how this is going to be resolved, because he’s already tried to come back militarily &mdash; I mean, not militarily, but force his way back into the country.
And I think that the problem is that, you know, up until recently, Honduras was a very &mdash; had very traditional right-wing politics, was one of the most reliable countries, most compliant regimes in Central America towards the United States. And now you see the resurgence of these right-wing forces. And so, there is this vibrant &mdash; these vibrant social movements in Honduras &mdash; for example, the Garifuna people, the Afro-Honduran, the indigenous people, and labor. But I think perhaps this could be the resurgence of these right-wing forces that really haven’t gone away, that it seemed for a while that we had the pink tide from South America, the rise of the left spreading into Central America. This could be, perhaps, a disturbing sign that those old retrograde forces are now trying to prove that they can stage a comeback. And I think that’s disturbing for other countries that are, say, allied to Venezuela, you know, such as small nations in the Caribbean, and this could be a very disturbing message to other countries that are following and trying to cultivate ties to Venezuela.
AMY GOODMAN : Nikolas Kozloff, I want to thank you for being with us, author of the book Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left . His latest piece, “From Arbenz to Zelaya: Chiquita in Latin America.”
And thanks to James Hodge and Linda Cooper, co-authors of Disturbing the Peace: The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas . Their latest article, published in the National Catholic Reporter , exposing that US is still training Honduran officers at the School of the Americas, WHINSEC , at Fort Benning, Georgia.AMYGOODMAN: We turn now to Honduras, where the coup regime is defying growing international pressure to restore ousted President Manuel Zelaya. On Monday, the European Union announced the suspension of over $92 million in aid. The move came one day after the regime rejected a proposal for Zelaya’s return but with new limits on his authority and under a power-sharing government. Presidential elections would also have been moved up to October. Zelaya accepted the entire plan, which was proposed by mediator Oscar Arias, the Costa Rican president, but the de facto coup government said it won’t accept Zelaya’s reinstatement under any condition. After the talks broke down, Arias warned Honduras is on the brink of "civil war and bloodshed."

Zelaya has vowed to return with or without an agreement. In Honduras, his supporters continue daily protests, leading up to a two-day national strike set to begin Thursday. On Monday, hundreds marched near the Honduran Congress.

EDGARDOVALERIANO: [translated] He will come as the circumstances allow it. As he said himself, it could even be this week. There needs to be enough time for the mediation by President Arias to have an effect and for the oligarchy to retreat and for diplomatic pressure from the United States and other civilized countries to force them to realize that the path to military coups has fallen away.

AMYGOODMAN: The Obama administration has also put new pressure on the coup government. On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned the installed Honduran President Roberto Micheletti and warned of, quote, "long-term consequences" if ongoing talks fail. It was the Obama administration’s highest-level contact with the coup regime so far. The US has so far suspended $18 million in aid but could withhold another $180 million.

Although the US appears to be increasing diplomatic pressure on Honduras, questions are being raised about its vow to cut military ties. The National Catholic Reporter has revealed at least two Honduran army officers are still receiving military training in the United States. The officers are currently enrolled at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, known as WHINSEC, formerly known as the School of the Americas, at Fort Benning, Georgia. That’s the facility that has a long record of training Latin American military officers involved in human rights abuses. Six Honduran military officials linked to the coup have trained at Fort Benning, including the coup’s military leader, General Romeo Orlando Vásquez Velásquez.

For more, I’m joined by three guests. James Hodge and Linda Cooper broke the story on the ongoing military training for the National Catholic Reporter, also co-authors of the book Disturbing the Peace: The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas. James Hodge and Linda Cooper join us from Columbus, Ohio. And here in the firehouse studio, Nikolas Kozloff, journalist and author of the book Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left. He has been writing extensively on the Honduran coup.

Let’s begin with our guests in Columbus. I’d like to begin with Linda Cooper. Tell us who the US military is training, has trained and is training today, of Honduran officers.

LINDACOOPER: The US military has trained, as you said, General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who was the commander of the army and instigated the coup; the general who’s in charge of the air force who facilitated the exile of Zelaya into Costa Rica; General Nelson Willy Mejía has been named minister of immigration, and he’s a graduate and a former instructor of the school who was also involved with Battalion 3-16, a known death squad; General Herberth Inestroza, the army’s top lawyer, who has admitted that the coup — who has admitted that when Zelaya was flown into exile, it was a crime, although he feels that it was justified; Lieutenant Colonel Ramiro Archaga, who’s the army’s director of public relations, who’s denied that the military is harassing protesters; Colonel Jorge Rodas Gamero, who’s a two-time graduate and the minister of security. Along with —-

AMYGOODMAN: Let me go to James Hodge for a minute. Talk about the significance of this training. I mean, it’s very significant what is happening right now. Clearly, the United States has -— holds a lot of sway over Honduras. The European Union just cut off all economic aid, and yet the United States has yet to do this, though they did say they’ve cut military ties, and yet we’re hearing this story.

JAMESHODGE: Yes. The Foreign Appropriations Act requires that the United States suspend all aid and training if a coup — if a country has undergone a coup. And President Obama said right after the coup that it was an illegal action and that President Zelaya was the democratically elected president. However, what we found is that the School of the Americas, now known as WHINSEC, has continued to train Honduran soldiers. And that gives a very strong signal to the Hondurans that the United States is sending mixed messages.

The military ties between Honduras and the United States go way back. Honduras used to be called the USS Honduras, because we used the country in many ways during the ’80s. President Reagan used it to launch the Contra war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

AMYGOODMAN: This was when the former US ambassador, right, John Negroponte was the US ambassador under Reagan to Honduras.

JAMESHODGE: That is correct. Ambassador Negroponte was there and basically turned a blind eye to all of the abuses by the Battalion 3-16 death squad. So, you know, you can’t underestimate the significance of this training, because if you —-

But it’s happened before. This is not a partisan issue. After Oscar Romero, who was the archbishop of San Salvador, in 1980 sent a letter to Jimmy Carter asking him to cut off aid to that country, he was assassinated. And Jimmy Carter turned on the aid very shortly thereafter. And the US church women who were also assassinated in that same year, the aid was cut off for a couple of weeks, and then it was turned back on.

So the problem is, is that the United States sends these mixed messages. On one hand, they condemn, you know, the coup in this situation, or they condemn the assassination of Bishop Romero, but it’s sort of like a wink and a nod. The aid continues, and the training continued, as it did in El Salvador in the 1980s.

AMYGOODMAN: How did you find out, James Hodge, that the US is continuing today to train Honduran soldiers, officers, at the School of the Americas, WHINSEC, in Fort Benning?

JAMESHODGE: Well, what happened was Father Roy Bourgeois, who had taken a fact-finding mission to Honduras about a week ago, he went to the military base there outside of Tegucigalpa and found that the -— nothing had changed. He talked to the officer, US officer, in charge there, and they said that, you know, everything was going on just as — just like normal.

So we decided to call WHINSEC and find out if that training was, in fact, going on. We talked to Lee Rials, who is the spokesman, and he said, “Yes, they’re in class right now.” And I was a little dumbfounded. And he said that, you know, they do not make the policy, that that’s a State Department, White House decision. And he said they just do — you know, nothing had changed there, either. The operations were going on, and no one had told them to — for them to cease.

He did, however, refuse to give us the names of the graduates, because since 2005 the Department of Defense has refused to release the names of the graduates after it was found out that they were admitting soldiers that had known human rights abuses. And so, supposedly, WHINSEC was supposed to be more transparent than the School of the Americas, but in fact it has not been.

AMYGOODMAN: And that’s not the only school, as they said.

JAMESHODGE: Yeah, we do train — I mean, the School of the Americas, or WHINSEC, trains soldiers in Spanish. So it’s the premier school to teach Latin American officers. However, there are other military bases in the United States that do train Latin American soldiers, but the training is done in English.

AMYGOODMAN: Nikolas Kozloff, you’ve been following the coup very closely right now. Talk about the latest developments and who you feel is behind it. And what exactly is the US role here? If the US cut off aid, economic and military aid, do you feel that would end the coup?

NIKOLASKOZLOFF: I don’t think so. I think there’s this revolving door of Washington insiders that are supporting companies like Chiquita banana. I just wrote an article about Chiquita, formerly known as the United Fruit Company. And, you know, throughout history, Chiquita banana has had enormous sway and power over Central American nations.

And we know that prior to the coup d’état in Honduras, Chiquita was very unhappy about President Zelaya’s minimum wage decrees, because they said that this would cut into their profits and make it more expensive for them to export bananas and pineapple. And we know that they appealed to the Honduran Business Association, which was also opposed to Zelaya’s minimum wage provisions.

And we also — and what I find really interesting is that Chiquita is allied to a Washington law firm called Covington, which advises multinational corporations. And who is the vice chairman of Covington? None other than John Negroponte, who your previous guest mentioned in regards to the rampant human rights abuses that went on in Honduras throughout the 1980s. So I think that’s a really interesting connection.

AMYGOODMAN: You talk about the money and the support, Chiquita, then and now. It’s interesting, this is so reminiscent of the coup against the Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He wasn’t in office but a year, 1990, 1991, when he was ousted, and one of his first acts when he became president was to increase the minimum wage, as Zelaya has done.

NIKOLASKOZLOFF: Well, right, and this is nothing new, as I point out in a recent article. Throughout the twentieth century, Chiquita, formerly known as United Fruit, was associated with some of the most backward, retrograde political and economic forces in Central America and indeed outside of Central America in such countries as Colombia. And we know that United Fruit Company played a very prominent role in the coup d’état against democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. And, you know, after that, that ushered in a very turbulent period in Guatemalan history, rampant human rights abuses, genocide against the indigenous people of Guatemala. And so, Guatemala is only now recovering from that.

But, you know, Chiquita has played a role in such countries as Guatemala and also Colombia, and now it maintains these ties to Covington, this law firm in Washington, to this day. And there is this revolving door, as I say before, of these Washington insiders. Covington, in turn, is tied to McLarty and Kissinger Associates, McLarty being President Clinton’s former Chief of Staff and envoy to Latin America, who was pushing the free trade agenda in Latin America, and Kissinger, who doesn’t even need an introduction. His ties to the coup in Chile in 1973 are well known. And so, it’s disturbing that there is this history of abuses in Central America throughout the twentieth century with Chiquita and the fruit companies, which continues to this day.

AMYGOODMAN: And then you have — well, we played Lanny Davis’s testimony before Congress, Lanny Davis, who we were speaking to Ken Silverstein about last week, the superb investigative reporter, about his representing the Chamber of Commerce, which is very much on the side of the coup regime right now. Lanny Davis is the former White House counsel for President Clinton.

NIKOLASKOZLOFF: Right, and there’s these — there’s the circle of Clintonites that are still around. And as I mentioned before, you have Mack McLarty, who’s now associated with a law firm which is defending Chiquita. Also, as I point out in my recent article, you have the current Attorney General, Eric Holder, who was also Deputy Attorney General under Clinton, who defended Chiquita and its actions in Colombia, when Chiquita was allied to right-wing paramilitary death squads in the 1990s, was found guilty of paying off paramilitaries. And Eric Holder, the current Attorney General, who was also in the Clinton administration, was the lead counsel for Chiquita.

AMYGOODMAN: And explain the significance of what he was representing Chiquita around. I mean, we know the story of the Cincinnati Enquirer that did this remarkable exposé of Chiquita, which they were forced to apologize for, not because they were wrong, but because the reporter had gotten access to voicemail system within Chiquita, and they said that it was illegal how he had gained access to that voicemail system. But what he exposed was quite astounding.

NIKOLASKOZLOFF: Right. Well, Chiquita claimed that it was merely paying protection money to the paramilitaries in Colombia. But the victims of the paramilitary violence in Colombia claim otherwise. They say that Chiquita was engaged in this systematic campaign to control banana production in Colombia and terrorize the population. And Chiquita was the only company in US history to be found guilty of paying bribes to a terrorist organization, as defined by the United States.

Eric Holder was the lead counsel defending Chiquita. He’s the top justice official in the United States with ties to this fruit company that was complicit in right-wing paramilitary violence.

AMYGOODMAN: So, the latest right now — the developments of the EU dropping support for Honduras, the talks with Oscar Arias breaking down. Though the elected president, Zelaya, has fully accepted what he proposed, the coup regime has said no. What’s going to happen? Oscar Arias said there could be a civil war, the President of Costa Rica and the Nobel Prize winner.

NIKOLASKOZLOFF: Well, I don’t really — I don’t see how this is going to be resolved, because he’s already tried to come back militarily — I mean, not militarily, but force his way back into the country.

And I think that the problem is that, you know, up until recently, Honduras was a very — had very traditional right-wing politics, was one of the most reliable countries, most compliant regimes in Central America towards the United States. And now you see the resurgence of these right-wing forces. And so, there is this vibrant — these vibrant social movements in Honduras — for example, the Garifuna people, the Afro-Honduran, the indigenous people, and labor. But I think perhaps this could be the resurgence of these right-wing forces that really haven’t gone away, that it seemed for a while that we had the pink tide from South America, the rise of the left spreading into Central America. This could be, perhaps, a disturbing sign that those old retrograde forces are now trying to prove that they can stage a comeback. And I think that’s disturbing for other countries that are, say, allied to Venezuela, you know, such as small nations in the Caribbean, and this could be a very disturbing message to other countries that are following and trying to cultivate ties to Venezuela.

AMYGOODMAN: Nikolas Kozloff, I want to thank you for being with us, author of the book Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left. His latest piece, “From Arbenz to Zelaya: Chiquita in Latin America.”

And thanks to James Hodge and Linda Cooper, co-authors of Disturbing the Peace: The Story of Father Roy Bourgeois and the Movement to Close the School of the Americas. Their latest article, published in the National Catholic Reporter, exposing that US is still training Honduran officers at the School of the Americas, WHINSEC, at Fort Benning, Georgia.]]>

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400Honduran Coup Regime Blocks Ousted President Zelaya's Return; Troops Open Fire on Supporters at Airport, Killing Twohttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/6/honduran_military_blocks_ousted_president_zelayas
tag:democracynow.org,2009-07-06:en/story/3bd335 AMY GOODMAN : A week after a military coup in Honduras, soldiers and riot police blocked the airport runway Sunday evening, preventing ousted president Manuel Zelaya from returning to the country. Heavily armed Honduran soldiers also used tear gas and machine guns to disperse an unarmed crowd of over tens of thousands of people who had come from all over the country, despite military blockades, to wait at the airport and welcome back their ousted president. At least two people were reportedly killed and more wounded.
After several failed attempts to touch down at the Tegucigalpa airport, Zelaya’s plane eventually flew to Nicaragua, where he met President Daniel Ortega. He was accompanied by the president of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, on the plane. Zelaya then went on to El Salvador, where he’s due to meet the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, and the head of the Organization of American States.
On Saturday, the OAS suspended Honduras. It marked the organization’s first suspension of a country in over forty-five years.
For more from Honduras, we’re joined on the phone from Tegucigalpa by Andrés Conteris. He is the Program on the Americas director for Nonviolence International. He worked as a human rights advocate in Honduras from 1994 to 1999. He is co-producer of Hidden in Plain Sight , a documentary film about US policy in Latin America and the School of the Americas. And he works with Democracy Now! en Espanol.
Andrés, welcome to Democracy Now! Tell us what happened. You were at the airport?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : Yes, I was at the airport, Amy, and it was a day of mostly peaceful demonstration. The estimates on the numbers were well over 100,000 people in the streets of Tegucigalpa going to the airport. The police would block the marchers, but then, every half hour or so, they would retreat, and therefore, causing a pause in the march, but creating a sense of peace on both sides. So most of the day was very, very coordinated, and there was no problems.
The violence erupted later in the afternoon, and it’s very clear that a sharpshooter was the one responsible for killing one of the protesters near the airport entrance.
AMY GOODMAN : So, tell us throughout the weekend how things went down and when &mdash; what happened when President Zelaya, the ousted president, was flying over the airport.
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : Throughout the weekend, things have been getting more and more intense, because, first, the expected arrival of President Zelaya was last Thursday. He, himself, announced that. And then the OAS said they needed some time to give Honduras a chance to return to constitutional order and return him to power. That was &mdash; so the OAS gave Honduras, the regime here, three days. Then Mel Zelaya said he would come on Saturday, and then that was postponed until yesterday, Sunday.
Throughout this time, the repression in the country has become more and more intensified. People from around the country have been trying to get to the capital to show their support for their president. And dozens of buses have been prevented from coming into the capital. One of the buses was machine-gunned on its tires. And Father Andrés Tamayo from Olancho was beaten, along with others, while trying to come to the capital. This, along with the fear and intimidation tactics that are used against human rights leaders and especially members of the press that are trying to get the word out about those in the country who are against the coup.
AMY GOODMAN : Andrés, what exactly is happening with the media in Honduras right now?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : The media, overwhelmingly, in this country is controlled by an oligarchy that is very supportive of this coup. And so, they are only trying to get out the story about some of the demonstrations that have been in favor of Roberto Micheletti taking power a week ago yesterday.
However, the press who is trying to give a balanced approach and to give voice to those who were in the streets yesterday and the recent days, in addition to yesterday, they are finding &mdash; they&#8217;re facing incredible repression. There was a journalist on Friday who was murdered after leaving Radio America in San Juan Pueblo in the rural area in the north. Then there are two journalists who are in hiding. One of them is the head of Channel 36; the other is the director of Radio Globo. Other journalists who have decided to continue their programming are facing death threats and fear and intimidation tactics. One journalist jumped three stories when the soldiers came to get him in Radio Globo on the day of the coup, and the reason he did is because he had been tortured in the ’80s, and he feared that this would happen once again. He fractured his shoulder and has lesions around his body. Another journalist has had his family threatened, and just two days ago his two sons on the street were threatened with a revolver by a car with darkened windows.
AMY GOODMAN : Also, a bomb, July 4th, Saturday, exploded at Channel 11 in Tegucigalpa?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : That happened at 9:30 p.m. at night, and it was the first bomb that had been placed at any institution that actually went off. The material damage was severe. There was no one else hurt. But Channel 11 is not &mdash; has not been known as a channel that would give the side that is counter to this regime that is in power now, but they were attempting to do some small efforts to give a balanced approach. But even in doing that, that is what caused them to be a target of this bombing. Other channels closed. I said Channel 36, also Channel 45.
In terms of radio, Radio Globo in Tegucigalpa is the station that has most been under attack. I mentioned the man who jumped three stories. The director is in hiding. Other journalists are under life threat. One of the radio stations in the countryside, Radio Progreso, this was shut down. Radio Progreso is a very, very progressive voice, run by the Jesuit community. One station here in Tegucigalpa that carries the headline news for Democracy Now! was clearly forced to take headline news of Democracy Now! off of the air, because we have been reporting on the coup. So the press censorship has been very, very severe, and the intimidation and terror tactics against journalists have been in incrementing.
AMY GOODMAN : Can you talk about the curfew, the sunset-to-sunrise curfew that has been imposed? And also, BBC reported that as President Zelaya, the ousted president, wasn’t able to land, his supporters at the airport began shouting, “We want blue helmets!” meaning UN peacekeepers.
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : Yes, the curfew was first imposed very soon after the coup &mdash; the night of the coup, in fact. The coup happened very early in the morning a week ago Sunday, on the 28th of June, and the coup was &mdash; I’m sorry, the curfew was imposed that night from 9:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. That was put in place for the next few days, and then the Congress passed a law that extended the curfew, but not only that, it limited guaranteed constitutional rights of freedom of gathering, freedom of association, and basically freedom from any &mdash; freedom to protect their very rights. In other words, once the curfew is in force, which was 9:00 p.m., but that yesterday was changed to 6:30 p.m., until 5:00 a.m. in the morning. During that time, any house can be raided, and all the constitutional guarantees of the citizens here are canceled.
The international press has also received harassment, if they are trying to report an anti-coup position, and have been threatened with leaving the country, especially journalists from Telesur and others from Venezuela.
AMY GOODMAN : Andrés, very quickly, because we just have a minute, can you talk about the situation of the United States not calling it a coup in Honduras and the very close US relationship with Honduras, particularly the aid that has not been cut off, though military cooperation, the Obama administration has announced, has been cut off?
ANDRÉS CONTERIS : The US policy toward Honduras has historically been one of having a great deal of control, and the US policy continues to be that. It’s very clear that the US is trying to associate itself with not only Latin America, but the entire world. But even though the United States is not following even US law which says that no aid, either economic or military, can go to a country when it is declared that a coup has happened, both Obama and Hillary Clinton have said a coup has happened, but they have not legally declared that the case. That means that aid continues to flow, even though the State Department has used the word that there has been a “pause” and even though the Pentagon has said that associations between the US military and Honduran military have been minimized. Even those symbolic efforts, even if they have happened, it doesn’t mean that the aid should continue to flow, and therefore, the US is in violation of its own law in continuing to support this regime.
The history of the US in this country is also full of repression. The School of the Americas trained the coup leader here, the general who took over. And Billy Joya, also related to the Battalion 3-16, a death squad which was founded during the time of John Dimitri Negroponte, Billy Joya is a key security adviser to the so-called president Roberto Micheletti. And so, the ties of US policy here continue to be damaging, and the US is not taking an active role in resolving this crisis.
AMY GOODMAN : Andrés Conteris, I want to thank you for being with us, speaking to us from Tegucigalpa. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, John Pilger, the award-winning filmmaker, on Honduras, Iran, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more. Stay with us. AMYGOODMAN: A week after a military coup in Honduras, soldiers and riot police blocked the airport runway Sunday evening, preventing ousted president Manuel Zelaya from returning to the country. Heavily armed Honduran soldiers also used tear gas and machine guns to disperse an unarmed crowd of over tens of thousands of people who had come from all over the country, despite military blockades, to wait at the airport and welcome back their ousted president. At least two people were reportedly killed and more wounded.

After several failed attempts to touch down at the Tegucigalpa airport, Zelaya’s plane eventually flew to Nicaragua, where he met President Daniel Ortega. He was accompanied by the president of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, on the plane. Zelaya then went on to El Salvador, where he’s due to meet the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, and the head of the Organization of American States.

On Saturday, the OAS suspended Honduras. It marked the organization’s first suspension of a country in over forty-five years.

For more from Honduras, we’re joined on the phone from Tegucigalpa by Andrés Conteris. He is the Program on the Americas director for Nonviolence International. He worked as a human rights advocate in Honduras from 1994 to 1999. He is co-producer of Hidden in Plain Sight, a documentary film about US policy in Latin America and the School of the Americas. And he works with Democracy Now! en Espanol.

Andrés, welcome to Democracy Now! Tell us what happened. You were at the airport?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: Yes, I was at the airport, Amy, and it was a day of mostly peaceful demonstration. The estimates on the numbers were well over 100,000 people in the streets of Tegucigalpa going to the airport. The police would block the marchers, but then, every half hour or so, they would retreat, and therefore, causing a pause in the march, but creating a sense of peace on both sides. So most of the day was very, very coordinated, and there was no problems.

The violence erupted later in the afternoon, and it’s very clear that a sharpshooter was the one responsible for killing one of the protesters near the airport entrance.

AMYGOODMAN: So, tell us throughout the weekend how things went down and when — what happened when President Zelaya, the ousted president, was flying over the airport.

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: Throughout the weekend, things have been getting more and more intense, because, first, the expected arrival of President Zelaya was last Thursday. He, himself, announced that. And then the OAS said they needed some time to give Honduras a chance to return to constitutional order and return him to power. That was — so the OAS gave Honduras, the regime here, three days. Then Mel Zelaya said he would come on Saturday, and then that was postponed until yesterday, Sunday.

Throughout this time, the repression in the country has become more and more intensified. People from around the country have been trying to get to the capital to show their support for their president. And dozens of buses have been prevented from coming into the capital. One of the buses was machine-gunned on its tires. And Father Andrés Tamayo from Olancho was beaten, along with others, while trying to come to the capital. This, along with the fear and intimidation tactics that are used against human rights leaders and especially members of the press that are trying to get the word out about those in the country who are against the coup.

AMYGOODMAN: Andrés, what exactly is happening with the media in Honduras right now?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: The media, overwhelmingly, in this country is controlled by an oligarchy that is very supportive of this coup. And so, they are only trying to get out the story about some of the demonstrations that have been in favor of Roberto Micheletti taking power a week ago yesterday.

However, the press who is trying to give a balanced approach and to give voice to those who were in the streets yesterday and the recent days, in addition to yesterday, they are finding — they’re facing incredible repression. There was a journalist on Friday who was murdered after leaving Radio America in San Juan Pueblo in the rural area in the north. Then there are two journalists who are in hiding. One of them is the head of Channel 36; the other is the director of Radio Globo. Other journalists who have decided to continue their programming are facing death threats and fear and intimidation tactics. One journalist jumped three stories when the soldiers came to get him in Radio Globo on the day of the coup, and the reason he did is because he had been tortured in the ’80s, and he feared that this would happen once again. He fractured his shoulder and has lesions around his body. Another journalist has had his family threatened, and just two days ago his two sons on the street were threatened with a revolver by a car with darkened windows.

AMYGOODMAN: Also, a bomb, July 4th, Saturday, exploded at Channel 11 in Tegucigalpa?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: That happened at 9:30 p.m. at night, and it was the first bomb that had been placed at any institution that actually went off. The material damage was severe. There was no one else hurt. But Channel 11 is not — has not been known as a channel that would give the side that is counter to this regime that is in power now, but they were attempting to do some small efforts to give a balanced approach. But even in doing that, that is what caused them to be a target of this bombing. Other channels closed. I said Channel 36, also Channel 45.

In terms of radio, Radio Globo in Tegucigalpa is the station that has most been under attack. I mentioned the man who jumped three stories. The director is in hiding. Other journalists are under life threat. One of the radio stations in the countryside, Radio Progreso, this was shut down. Radio Progreso is a very, very progressive voice, run by the Jesuit community. One station here in Tegucigalpa that carries the headline news for Democracy Now! was clearly forced to take headline news of Democracy Now! off of the air, because we have been reporting on the coup. So the press censorship has been very, very severe, and the intimidation and terror tactics against journalists have been in incrementing.

AMYGOODMAN: Can you talk about the curfew, the sunset-to-sunrise curfew that has been imposed? And also, BBC reported that as President Zelaya, the ousted president, wasn’t able to land, his supporters at the airport began shouting, “We want blue helmets!” meaning UN peacekeepers.

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: Yes, the curfew was first imposed very soon after the coup — the night of the coup, in fact. The coup happened very early in the morning a week ago Sunday, on the 28th of June, and the coup was — I’m sorry, the curfew was imposed that night from 9:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. That was put in place for the next few days, and then the Congress passed a law that extended the curfew, but not only that, it limited guaranteed constitutional rights of freedom of gathering, freedom of association, and basically freedom from any — freedom to protect their very rights. In other words, once the curfew is in force, which was 9:00 p.m., but that yesterday was changed to 6:30 p.m., until 5:00 a.m. in the morning. During that time, any house can be raided, and all the constitutional guarantees of the citizens here are canceled.

The international press has also received harassment, if they are trying to report an anti-coup position, and have been threatened with leaving the country, especially journalists from Telesur and others from Venezuela.

AMYGOODMAN: Andrés, very quickly, because we just have a minute, can you talk about the situation of the United States not calling it a coup in Honduras and the very close US relationship with Honduras, particularly the aid that has not been cut off, though military cooperation, the Obama administration has announced, has been cut off?

ANDRÉS CONTERIS: The US policy toward Honduras has historically been one of having a great deal of control, and the US policy continues to be that. It’s very clear that the US is trying to associate itself with not only Latin America, but the entire world. But even though the United States is not following even US law which says that no aid, either economic or military, can go to a country when it is declared that a coup has happened, both Obama and Hillary Clinton have said a coup has happened, but they have not legally declared that the case. That means that aid continues to flow, even though the State Department has used the word that there has been a “pause” and even though the Pentagon has said that associations between the US military and Honduran military have been minimized. Even those symbolic efforts, even if they have happened, it doesn’t mean that the aid should continue to flow, and therefore, the US is in violation of its own law in continuing to support this regime.

The history of the US in this country is also full of repression. The School of the Americas trained the coup leader here, the general who took over. And Billy Joya, also related to the Battalion 3-16, a death squad which was founded during the time of John Dimitri Negroponte, Billy Joya is a key security adviser to the so-called president Roberto Micheletti. And so, the ties of US policy here continue to be damaging, and the US is not taking an active role in resolving this crisis.

AMYGOODMAN: Andrés Conteris, I want to thank you for being with us, speaking to us from Tegucigalpa. This is Democracy Now!

When we come back, John Pilger, the award-winning filmmaker, on Honduras, Iran, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more. Stay with us.

The first coup d’etat in Central America in more than a quarter-century occurred last Sunday in Honduras. Honduran soldiers roused democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya from his bed and flew him into exile in Costa Rica. The coup, led by the Honduran Gen. Romeo Vasquez, has been condemned by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, the Organization of American States and all of Honduras’ immediate national neighbors. Mass protests have erupted on the streets of Honduras, with reports that elements in the military loyal to Zelaya are rebelling against the coup.

The United States has a long history of domination in the hemisphere. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can chart a new course, away from the dark days of military dictatorship, repression and murder. Obama indicated such a direction when he spoke in April at the Summit of the Americas: “[A]t times we sought to dictate our terms. But I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and junior partner in our relations.”

Two who know well the history of dictated U.S. terms are Dr. Juan Almendares, a medical doctor and award-winning human rights activist in Honduras, and the American clergyman Father Roy Bourgeois, a priest who for years has fought to close the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Ga. Both men link the coup in Honduras to the SOA.

The SOA, renamed in 2000 the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), is the U.S. military facility that trains Latin American soldiers. The SOA has trained more than 60,000 soldiers, many of whom have returned home and committed human rights abuses, torture, extrajudicial execution and massacres.

Almendares, targeted by Honduran death squads and the military, has been the victim of that training. He talked to me from Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital: “Most of this military have been trained by the School of America. ... They have been guardians of the multinational business from the United States or from other countries. ... The army in Honduras has links with very powerful people, very rich, wealthy people who keep the poverty in the country. We are occupied by your country.”

Born in Louisiana, Bourgeois became a Catholic priest in 1972. He worked in Bolivia and was forced out by the (SOA-trained) dictator Gen. Hugo Banzer. The assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the murders of four Catholic churchwomen in El Salvador in 1980 led him to protest where some of the killers were trained: Fort Benning’s SOA. After six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were murdered in El Salvador in 1989, Bourgeois founded SOA Watch and has built an international movement to close the SOA.

Honduran coup leader Vasquez attended the SOA in 1976 and 1984. Air Force Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, who also participated in the coup, was trained at the SOA in 1996.

Bourgeois’ SOA Watch office is just yards from the Fort Benning gates. He has been frustrated in recent years by increased secrecy at SOA/WHINSEC. He told me: “They are trying to present the school as one of democracy and transparency, but we are not able to get the names of those trained here—for over five years. However, there was a little sign of hope when the U.S. House approved an amendment to the defense authorization bill last week that would force the school to release names and ranks of people who train here.” The amendment still has to make it through the House-Senate conference committee.

Bourgeois speaks with the same urgency that he has for decades. His voice is well known at Fort Benning, where he was first arrested more than 25 years ago when he climbed a tree at night near the barracks of Salvadoran soldiers who were training there at the time.

Bourgeois blasted a recording of the voice of Romero in his last address before he was assassinated. The archbishop was speaking directly to Salvadoran soldiers in his country: “In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: Stop the repression.”

Almost 30 years later, in a country bordering Romero’s El Salvador, the U.S. has a chance to change course and support the democratic institutions of Honduras. Undo the coup.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” an independent, daily global TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in the United States and around the world. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

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Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:42:00 -0400Generals Who Led Honduras Military Coup Trained at the School of the Americashttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/1/generals_who_led_honduras_military_coup
tag:democracynow.org,2009-07-01:en/story/1a7a13 AMY GOODMAN : Dr. Almendares, I wanted to turn for a minute to Father Roy Bourgeois. By the way, the latest news, the World Bank president Robert Zoellick said that the World Bank has put on hold aid to Honduras during the political crisis, which he cautioned might be a setback for the region.
Father Roy Bourgeois, you’re right outside Fort Benning, where what used to be known as School of the Americas is. The new name, WHINSEC . What is the connection between WHINSEC , School of the Americas, and the coup in Honduras?
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : Well, first of all, we&#8217;re not surprised, you know, that there&#8217;s a connection to the School of the Americas, now called WHINSEC . This school is well known in Latin America as a school of coups, a school of dictators, a school of torture. There is a direct connection, which we expected.
The two main players in this coup in Honduras that ousted President Zelaya are two generals, well-known graduates of the school: General Romero Vasquez, who’s the commander-in-chief, the head of the military, not only a graduate, a two-time graduate; and, of course, also General Luis Suazo, a graduate of the school in 1996, who’s the head of the air force.
This school is well known in Latin America, again, as a school of coups. Whenever there is a massacre, cases of torture, human rights abuses, we have been able to document a direct connection to this school. This school has trained over 60,000 soldiers from fifteen countries in Latin America in combat skills, all paid for, I must say, by the US taxpayers.
And we, of course, are &mdash; like so many, are outraged by this coup. This is a scandal. We’re encouraged by the response, of course, from the international community and the tens of thousands in the SOA Watch movement, who are really walking in solidarity with the people of Honduras at this time and the poor throughout Latin America.
JUAN GONZALEZ : Father Bourgeois, I’d like to ask you &mdash; this reminds me very much of what happened years ago in Haiti, where you had basically a military coup against a legally elected president, Aristide, and where the &mdash; a Democratic administration, President Clinton, condemned the coup leaders, as has President Obama, at least in this in the early days here, but where the US military was playing a different role &mdash; in essence, had its own ties with the established coup leaders. I’m wondering if &mdash; your response to how this has played out previously throughout Latin America, these kinds of coups?
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : Yes, you know, when we’re talking about Haiti, the main players in what happened in Haiti were trained not at the School of the Americas, but at Fort Benning at that time, who were very involved in ousting President Aristide.
I don&#8217;t know what to say other than, you know, this school has a long history for this region. You know, many of us are very familiar with what happened in El Salvador and many other countries. The high-profile cases, Archbishop Oscar Romero, the six Jesuits, the four US church women who were raped and killed &mdash; all of these cases, along with the thousands of others, they have been graduates of the US Army School of the Americas, now called WHINSEC .
I’m happy to say that just last week, we had in Congress a vote. Last week, the House approved an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which would force the Pentagon to release the names of the graduates, including their rank, the courses taken, and the country of origin. For the last five years, they have refused to give us these names, all in the name of, you know, national security. While they talk about transparency and democracy, this school is an obstacle to democracy and the sea change that’s taken place in Latin America.
Very important also, we have an upcoming bill, HR 2567 in Congress. This bill will suspend all operations at the school, and there will be a full investigation about the school and its hundreds of graduates who have been involved in these atrocities and coups. Eleven dictators have gone through this school. Whenever there’s been a coup, like this one in Honduras, over the past decades, there has been a direct connection to this school.
And we are calling on our members of Congress, and we want President Obama to get involved here. He has the power to shut down this school of assassins, this school of coups, this school with so much blood on its hands. He has the power to close this school by executive order. That’s why we are appealing for people in our country to write President Obama and tell him, as he talks about a new relationship with countries, let us also involve these countries of Latin America. Let us have President Obama close the school.
AMY GOODMAN : Father Roy Bourgeois, the legislation that you say was passed in the House now has to be reconciled with the Senate version, which doesn&#8217;t have this amendment that would require the release of names that you at School of the Americas Watch have relied on before the five years that you haven’t been able to get them, all of these years, to show the connection between what these soldiers do when they go home.
Just a little background on Father Roy Bourgeois for our listeners and viewers. First went to School of the Americas soon after Archbishop Oscar Romero was gunned down, assassinated, March 24th, 1980. And you took a boombox and went onto the base and broadcast the last words of Oscar Romero, the speech that he gave specifically to the Salvadoran soldiers, urging them to &mdash; saying, “I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression.” You broadcast his voice, and you were arrested and served a year and a half in prison.
But when did you actually set up SOA Watch right outside School of the Americas? I don’t think most people know about the Jesuits killed. I don’t think most people know about the four church women in El Salvador that were killed.
FATHER ROY BOURGEOIS : Amy, a small group of us came to the main gate of Fort Benning at the beginning of 1990. It was right after the massacre of six Jesuits in El Salvador, well-known Catholic priest walking with the poor there and their struggle, along with their two women coworkers. We were pumping a lot of money into El Salvador, about a million dollars a day at this time into their military. A US congressional task force went to investigate the massacre of the two women and the six Jesuits, came back reporting that those responsible were trained at the US Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning. That’s when I went down, set up camp. I continued to live, since 1990, in a small apartment right outside of the main gate of Fort Benning, was joined by some friends, Charlie Liteky, Kathy Kelly and so many &mdash; and a few others, and that began our movement.
We started to do research, and it didn’t take long for us to discover that in our backyard there was a school of assassins, a school that trains terrorists, really, in Latin America, all paid for &mdash; millions of dollars being pumped into this school today is all being &mdash; coming from our tax money, millions of dollars. And we want that money to go into, you know, projects for the poor, for the elderly, for healthcare, right here in our own communities.
Our movement has grown from ten in the early days. Every November, we gather at the main gate for our vigil to call for the closing of the school, to express our solidarity with the people of Latin America. I’m happy to report that this last November, about 20,000 gathered &mdash; students, veterans, lots of nuns. Parents come with their children. And we welcome people to be with us in November. To get more information, of course, about the issue and our upcoming vigil in November, I ask our viewers to simply go to soaw.org .
One other thing I just want &mdash; every morning I get up, I open my blinds, I look right across the street, there’s Fort Benning. Two chain-link fences with these signs &mdash; I carry this around with me &mdash; that says “No trespassing.” And beyond these signs and that razor wire that reminds me of some of the prisons that we have been sent to, those who protest the school, there is the School of the Americas, called now WHINSEC . They say they’re teaching democracy there. Well, we say you do not teach democracy behind the barrel of a gun. You cannot teach democracy behind a sign that says no trespassing. And this is our problem. This is not a school for democracy. There’s no transparency here. And we’re calling really on President Obama and more and more people now to really look at this school for what it is. It is a school of torture. It is a school for dictators. It is, most of all, a school of coups.AMYGOODMAN: Dr. Almendares, I wanted to turn for a minute to Father Roy Bourgeois. By the way, the latest news, the World Bank president Robert Zoellick said that the World Bank has put on hold aid to Honduras during the political crisis, which he cautioned might be a setback for the region.

Father Roy Bourgeois, you’re right outside Fort Benning, where what used to be known as School of the Americas is. The new name, WHINSEC. What is the connection between WHINSEC, School of the Americas, and the coup in Honduras?

FATHERROYBOURGEOIS: Well, first of all, we’re not surprised, you know, that there’s a connection to the School of the Americas, now called WHINSEC. This school is well known in Latin America as a school of coups, a school of dictators, a school of torture. There is a direct connection, which we expected.

The two main players in this coup in Honduras that ousted President Zelaya are two generals, well-known graduates of the school: General Romero Vasquez, who’s the commander-in-chief, the head of the military, not only a graduate, a two-time graduate; and, of course, also General Luis Suazo, a graduate of the school in 1996, who’s the head of the air force.

This school is well known in Latin America, again, as a school of coups. Whenever there is a massacre, cases of torture, human rights abuses, we have been able to document a direct connection to this school. This school has trained over 60,000 soldiers from fifteen countries in Latin America in combat skills, all paid for, I must say, by the US taxpayers.

And we, of course, are — like so many, are outraged by this coup. This is a scandal. We’re encouraged by the response, of course, from the international community and the tens of thousands in the SOA Watch movement, who are really walking in solidarity with the people of Honduras at this time and the poor throughout Latin America.

JUANGONZALEZ: Father Bourgeois, I’d like to ask you — this reminds me very much of what happened years ago in Haiti, where you had basically a military coup against a legally elected president, Aristide, and where the — a Democratic administration, President Clinton, condemned the coup leaders, as has President Obama, at least in this in the early days here, but where the US military was playing a different role — in essence, had its own ties with the established coup leaders. I’m wondering if — your response to how this has played out previously throughout Latin America, these kinds of coups?

FATHERROYBOURGEOIS: Yes, you know, when we’re talking about Haiti, the main players in what happened in Haiti were trained not at the School of the Americas, but at Fort Benning at that time, who were very involved in ousting President Aristide.

I don’t know what to say other than, you know, this school has a long history for this region. You know, many of us are very familiar with what happened in El Salvador and many other countries. The high-profile cases, Archbishop Oscar Romero, the six Jesuits, the four US church women who were raped and killed — all of these cases, along with the thousands of others, they have been graduates of the US Army School of the Americas, now called WHINSEC.

I’m happy to say that just last week, we had in Congress a vote. Last week, the House approved an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which would force the Pentagon to release the names of the graduates, including their rank, the courses taken, and the country of origin. For the last five years, they have refused to give us these names, all in the name of, you know, national security. While they talk about transparency and democracy, this school is an obstacle to democracy and the sea change that’s taken place in Latin America.

Very important also, we have an upcoming bill, HR 2567 in Congress. This bill will suspend all operations at the school, and there will be a full investigation about the school and its hundreds of graduates who have been involved in these atrocities and coups. Eleven dictators have gone through this school. Whenever there’s been a coup, like this one in Honduras, over the past decades, there has been a direct connection to this school.

And we are calling on our members of Congress, and we want President Obama to get involved here. He has the power to shut down this school of assassins, this school of coups, this school with so much blood on its hands. He has the power to close this school by executive order. That’s why we are appealing for people in our country to write President Obama and tell him, as he talks about a new relationship with countries, let us also involve these countries of Latin America. Let us have President Obama close the school.

AMYGOODMAN: Father Roy Bourgeois, the legislation that you say was passed in the House now has to be reconciled with the Senate version, which doesn’t have this amendment that would require the release of names that you at School of the Americas Watch have relied on before the five years that you haven’t been able to get them, all of these years, to show the connection between what these soldiers do when they go home.

Just a little background on Father Roy Bourgeois for our listeners and viewers. First went to School of the Americas soon after Archbishop Oscar Romero was gunned down, assassinated, March 24th, 1980. And you took a boombox and went onto the base and broadcast the last words of Oscar Romero, the speech that he gave specifically to the Salvadoran soldiers, urging them to — saying, “I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression.” You broadcast his voice, and you were arrested and served a year and a half in prison.

But when did you actually set up SOA Watch right outside School of the Americas? I don’t think most people know about the Jesuits killed. I don’t think most people know about the four church women in El Salvador that were killed.

FATHERROYBOURGEOIS: Amy, a small group of us came to the main gate of Fort Benning at the beginning of 1990. It was right after the massacre of six Jesuits in El Salvador, well-known Catholic priest walking with the poor there and their struggle, along with their two women coworkers. We were pumping a lot of money into El Salvador, about a million dollars a day at this time into their military. A US congressional task force went to investigate the massacre of the two women and the six Jesuits, came back reporting that those responsible were trained at the US Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning. That’s when I went down, set up camp. I continued to live, since 1990, in a small apartment right outside of the main gate of Fort Benning, was joined by some friends, Charlie Liteky, Kathy Kelly and so many — and a few others, and that began our movement.

We started to do research, and it didn’t take long for us to discover that in our backyard there was a school of assassins, a school that trains terrorists, really, in Latin America, all paid for — millions of dollars being pumped into this school today is all being — coming from our tax money, millions of dollars. And we want that money to go into, you know, projects for the poor, for the elderly, for healthcare, right here in our own communities.

Our movement has grown from ten in the early days. Every November, we gather at the main gate for our vigil to call for the closing of the school, to express our solidarity with the people of Latin America. I’m happy to report that this last November, about 20,000 gathered — students, veterans, lots of nuns. Parents come with their children. And we welcome people to be with us in November. To get more information, of course, about the issue and our upcoming vigil in November, I ask our viewers to simply go to soaw.org.

One other thing I just want — every morning I get up, I open my blinds, I look right across the street, there’s Fort Benning. Two chain-link fences with these signs — I carry this around with me — that says “No trespassing.” And beyond these signs and that razor wire that reminds me of some of the prisons that we have been sent to, those who protest the school, there is the School of the Americas, called now WHINSEC. They say they’re teaching democracy there. Well, we say you do not teach democracy behind the barrel of a gun. You cannot teach democracy behind a sign that says no trespassing. And this is our problem. This is not a school for democracy. There’s no transparency here. And we’re calling really on President Obama and more and more people now to really look at this school for what it is. It is a school of torture. It is a school for dictators. It is, most of all, a school of coups.]]>

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400What's Behind the Honduras Coup? Tracing Zelaya's Trajectoryhttp://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/1/whats_behind_the_honduras_coup_tracing
tag:democracynow.org,2009-07-01:en/story/3392df JUAN GONZALEZ : Father Bourgeois, we’d like to bring in our third guest here on this topic, Nikolas Kozloff, author of Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left .
Nik, Zelaya was not seen, when he first was elected, as any kind of a populist or a radical. Could you talk about his trajectory and what happened to him in his time in office that he has now become sort of the standard-bearer of the masses of Honduras?
NIKOLAS KOZLOFF : Sure, you’re right. I mean, Zelaya is a member of the business elite in Honduras. He’s a part of the Liberal Party, which is one of the two major parties in Honduras. And initially, he had supported the free trade agreement with the United States. But around 2007, 2008, as the region started to shift leftwards in South America, and you had the rise of, you know, Daniel Ortega in &mdash; of the Sandinista party in Nicaragua and Mauricio Funes in El Salvador of the FMLN , Zelaya started taking some more progressive positions, and most importantly in the foreign policy arena. You know, Honduras has had, traditionally, very strong ties to the United States, strong military ties. And so, when Zelaya started to embrace Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, that was hugely controversial amongst the Honduran elite and the media there. So this represented a sea change in Honduran politics.
And, you know, shortly thereafter, Hugo Chavez inserted himself into the local milieu. He came to Tegucigalpa, and there was a huge rally in support of something called the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas. It’s Chavez&#8217;s answer to the US-imposed free trade agreements in the region. And Zelaya had come out in support of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. And so, this set him at odds with the United States, and there was a history of friction between the US and Zelaya leading up to the coup.
And so, I think if you were just reading the reports in the mainstream media, you might get the impression that this coup is just about term limits in Honduras and it’s just a conflict over whether Zelaya will be able to extend his constitutional mandate of one four-year term. And my point is that there is an ideological component to this coup. You know, what did the coup plotters do? When they came into power, they roughed up the Venezuelan ambassador. They threatened and harassed a journalist working for Telesur, which is a satellite news network that’s run by Uruguay, Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela. So there&#8217;s a definite ideological component to this. And Roberto Micheletti, the new president, had actually opposed many of this &mdash; of foreign policy reorientation that Zelaya had favored in recent years.
JUAN GONZALEZ : Didn’t he also, Zelaya, take other stands that were diametrically opposed to US policy? For instance, he began coming out questioning whether the drug war was a legitimate war and should &mdash; there should be a possible legalization of drugs. And also, didn&#8217;t he raise the minimum wage substantially in a country where there’s a lot of free trade zones and people working in factories for foreign companies?
NIKOLAS KOZLOFF : Well, right. I mean, the first salvo against the Honduran elite was his moves to raise the minimum wage by 60 percent. And you’re right. I mean, this is a country where you have these maquiladora assembly plants, and the Honduran elite were, to say the least, displeased by the moves.
And then, after that, he started taking some very controversial foreign policy initiatives, probably most controversially, as you point out, criticizing the US war on drugs. And that’s not surprising, given that in recent years drug violence has exacted a heavy toll in Honduran society. You have these drug gangs that carry out gruesome attacks, beheadings, eye gougings, very gruesome kinds of tactics. And so, Zelaya actually called for the legalization in order to lessen the violence in Honduras. And then the US ambassador, actually the outgoing US ambassador, Charles Ford, remarked as he was leaving Honduras that, well, actually, remittances of Hondurans to Honduras are mostly drug-related, as I think that was a sort of punishment against Zelaya for taking unpopular foreign policy initiatives. And then, actually, that just prompted Zelaya to shoot back that, you know, the US is responsible for a lot of the drug violence in Central America.
AMY GOODMAN : Finally, Nik, the letter that President Zelaya wrote to President Obama.
NIKOLAS KOZLOFF : Well, I think it’s a very audacious move for the leader of a small Central American nation to write Obama personally. And this was in December of 2008, right after the election, even prior to the inauguration. And not only did he criticize US foreign policy in this letter, but what I think is really interesting is that he made it public, because he was upset by some of the remarks that the former US ambassador had made. And in his letter, he criticized the interventionist policies of the US ambassador.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, we’re going to leave it there, but certainly continue to follow the developments. Again, President Zelaya, ousted in a military coup in Honduras, the leaders of that coup trained at the School of the Americas, will return tomorrow. He addressed the United Nations yesterday, is in Washington today, though apparently not meeting with either President Obama or Secretary of State Clinton, will return tomorrow along with the Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, who will accompany him. And if you want to go to our interview with President Correa of last week, when he came to the UN for a day, you can go to democracynow.org.
Nik Kozloff, thanks for joining us. He’s author of Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left . I want to also thank Father Roy Bourgeois, just outside the gates of WHINSEC , which is the new name for the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, standing for Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. And Dr. Juan Almendares, head of the Honduran Peace Committee, presidential candidate who ran against Zelaya in 2005, now condemning the coup, calling for it to be undone.JUANGONZALEZ: Father Bourgeois, we’d like to bring in our third guest here on this topic, Nikolas Kozloff, author of Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left.

Nik, Zelaya was not seen, when he first was elected, as any kind of a populist or a radical. Could you talk about his trajectory and what happened to him in his time in office that he has now become sort of the standard-bearer of the masses of Honduras?

NIKOLASKOZLOFF: Sure, you’re right. I mean, Zelaya is a member of the business elite in Honduras. He’s a part of the Liberal Party, which is one of the two major parties in Honduras. And initially, he had supported the free trade agreement with the United States. But around 2007, 2008, as the region started to shift leftwards in South America, and you had the rise of, you know, Daniel Ortega in — of the Sandinista party in Nicaragua and Mauricio Funes in El Salvador of the FMLN, Zelaya started taking some more progressive positions, and most importantly in the foreign policy arena. You know, Honduras has had, traditionally, very strong ties to the United States, strong military ties. And so, when Zelaya started to embrace Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, that was hugely controversial amongst the Honduran elite and the media there. So this represented a sea change in Honduran politics.

And, you know, shortly thereafter, Hugo Chavez inserted himself into the local milieu. He came to Tegucigalpa, and there was a huge rally in support of something called the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas. It’s Chavez’s answer to the US-imposed free trade agreements in the region. And Zelaya had come out in support of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. And so, this set him at odds with the United States, and there was a history of friction between the US and Zelaya leading up to the coup.

And so, I think if you were just reading the reports in the mainstream media, you might get the impression that this coup is just about term limits in Honduras and it’s just a conflict over whether Zelaya will be able to extend his constitutional mandate of one four-year term. And my point is that there is an ideological component to this coup. You know, what did the coup plotters do? When they came into power, they roughed up the Venezuelan ambassador. They threatened and harassed a journalist working for Telesur, which is a satellite news network that’s run by Uruguay, Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela. So there’s a definite ideological component to this. And Roberto Micheletti, the new president, had actually opposed many of this — of foreign policy reorientation that Zelaya had favored in recent years.

JUANGONZALEZ: Didn’t he also, Zelaya, take other stands that were diametrically opposed to US policy? For instance, he began coming out questioning whether the drug war was a legitimate war and should — there should be a possible legalization of drugs. And also, didn’t he raise the minimum wage substantially in a country where there’s a lot of free trade zones and people working in factories for foreign companies?

NIKOLASKOZLOFF: Well, right. I mean, the first salvo against the Honduran elite was his moves to raise the minimum wage by 60 percent. And you’re right. I mean, this is a country where you have these maquiladora assembly plants, and the Honduran elite were, to say the least, displeased by the moves.

And then, after that, he started taking some very controversial foreign policy initiatives, probably most controversially, as you point out, criticizing the US war on drugs. And that’s not surprising, given that in recent years drug violence has exacted a heavy toll in Honduran society. You have these drug gangs that carry out gruesome attacks, beheadings, eye gougings, very gruesome kinds of tactics. And so, Zelaya actually called for the legalization in order to lessen the violence in Honduras. And then the US ambassador, actually the outgoing US ambassador, Charles Ford, remarked as he was leaving Honduras that, well, actually, remittances of Hondurans to Honduras are mostly drug-related, as I think that was a sort of punishment against Zelaya for taking unpopular foreign policy initiatives. And then, actually, that just prompted Zelaya to shoot back that, you know, the US is responsible for a lot of the drug violence in Central America.

AMYGOODMAN: Finally, Nik, the letter that President Zelaya wrote to President Obama.

NIKOLASKOZLOFF: Well, I think it’s a very audacious move for the leader of a small Central American nation to write Obama personally. And this was in December of 2008, right after the election, even prior to the inauguration. And not only did he criticize US foreign policy in this letter, but what I think is really interesting is that he made it public, because he was upset by some of the remarks that the former US ambassador had made. And in his letter, he criticized the interventionist policies of the US ambassador.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there, but certainly continue to follow the developments. Again, President Zelaya, ousted in a military coup in Honduras, the leaders of that coup trained at the School of the Americas, will return tomorrow. He addressed the United Nations yesterday, is in Washington today, though apparently not meeting with either President Obama or Secretary of State Clinton, will return tomorrow along with the Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, who will accompany him. And if you want to go to our interview with President Correa of last week, when he came to the UN for a day, you can go to democracynow.org.

Nik Kozloff, thanks for joining us. He’s author of Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left. I want to also thank Father Roy Bourgeois, just outside the gates of WHINSEC, which is the new name for the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, standing for Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. And Dr. Juan Almendares, head of the Honduran Peace Committee, presidential candidate who ran against Zelaya in 2005, now condemning the coup, calling for it to be undone.]]>

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400Guatemala's Indigenous Countryside Drives Election Victory over Atrocity-Linked Generalhttp://www.democracynow.org/2007/11/6/guatemalas_indigenous_countryside_drives_election_victory
tag:democracynow.org,2007-11-06:en/story/d0f1c5 AMY GOODMAN : In a few minutes, we&#8217;ll be going to Pakistan, but right now to Guatemala, where the centrist candidate Álvaro Colom has won the presidential election, this according to official election results released on Monday. In an upset victory, Colom beat the retired General Otto Pérez Molina on Sunday&#8217;s runoff election.
Colom ran on an anti-poverty platform, won close to 53 percent of the vote. In his victory speech, Colom thanked his supporters.
PRESIDENT - ELECT ÁLVARO COLOM : [translated] We won against all odds, against everything, because truth was on our side, because everyone&#8217;s work and each one of you was efficient, because we didn&#8217;t cheat or deceive. I said that we would win by between 4 and 7 percent, and we won by 5.2 percent.
AMY GOODMAN : General Pérez Molina, who led in the polls until last week, ran on an anti-crime platform. The ex-head of army intelligence, he promised to expand the police force by half and to use the military to fight crime. He commanded troops in one of Guatemala&#8217;s most violent areas and has been implicated in a number of political crimes. Pérez Molina conceded defeat in a news conference after the results were announced.
GENERAL OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA : [translated] We said we would respect the results given by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and that we would respect the will of the Guatemalans expressed through the ballots, and that&#8217;s what we are doing. We are present here.
AMY GOODMAN : To discuss the significance of the election and the task ahead for President-elect Álvaro Colom, we turn now to Guatemalan-American writer Francisco Goldman. His latest book is The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? It implicates the defeated presidential candidate, General Pérez Molina, in the 1998 murder of the beloved Guatemalan human rights activist, Bishop Juan Gerardi. Francisco Goldman joins us again, now from Houston, Texas. Welcome to Democracy Now! , Francisco.
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN : Hi, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN : It&#8217;s good to have you with us. First, your response to the election results?
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN : It&#8217;s &mdash; as a lot of my friends emailed me from Guatemala yesterday, Guatemalan democracy was saved. The country was on the verge of &mdash; people thought that this General Pérez Molina was going to be elected and possibly take them back to some equivalent of the hard-line military rule of 1980s. But the countryside, in this vote, defeated the city. And this is the first time in Guatemalan history, really, that the indigenous people in the highlands have really voted as a bloc and carried, by surprise, Colom to victory.
AMY GOODMAN : Now, talk about the significance of this. Isn&#8217;t it the first time that the president did not win the city, but the countryside?
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN : It&#8217;s definitely the very first time that the Indian population, the Mayan Indian population, the rural population, have really decisively backed one candidate. And everybody &mdash; the capital, which, as you know, is more mixed racially and economically, and etc., is quite separate in existence from its countryside.
And in Guatemala City, the media, all the television stations, virtually all the newspapers, which are all owned by pro-business, right-wing-type, you know, kinds of people who were heavily backing the general and, let&#8217;s say, not quite allowing news that might harm the general&#8217;s campaign to get into their media.
AMY GOODMAN : We spoke last week before the election, and you gave quite a frightening profile of the candidate who has been defeated, the general, Pérez Molina. Can you briefly summarize who he is again?
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN : General Pérez Molina was, during &mdash; you know, during Guatemala&#8217;s 36-year civil war, it had probably &mdash; the army, which ruled and dominated throughout that war, gave Guatemala probably the worst human rights record in Latin America and among the worst in the world. 200,000 civilians were killed. A lot of the worst atrocities were committed by Guatemala&#8217;s intelligence units, especially the G-2 and the EMP , the Presidential Military Staff. That&#8217;s where the death squads came from. That&#8217;s where the illegal detention centers, the torture centers, came from.
And General Pérez Molina, a graduate of the School of the Americas and so forth, was a chief of both of those entities. And even in reporting in places like The New York Times , you know, very vicious crimes that he was responsible for have been reported on.
But in the 1996 peace accords, the army, as the victor, insisted as a condition for peace &mdash; and acquiescent guerrillas agreed &mdash; that there should be a blanket amnesty for all human rights crimes, which means that he really couldn&#8217;t be prosecuted for a lot of those crimes. That was eventually breached when the U.N. declared crimes against humanity had occurred in Guatemala. There can be no amnesty for crimes against humanity.
But impunity still reigns in Guatemala to a great degree, and the courts just haven&#8217;t been strong enough to carry human rights trials forward. So what really became the issue, though, in the general&#8217;s campaign were not his wartime crimes, but news beginning to filter out about his peacetime crimes, which included the allegations that are made in a part of my book about his involvement in the murder of Bishop Gerardi, but also corruption charges and involvement in other crimes. These kinds of things began to bubble up on the fringes, but the pro-Pérez Molina media in Guatemala kept it out of the mainstream news down there. But it found its way into the population by other routes, let&#8217;s say.
AMY GOODMAN : Once again, talk about the evidence you have for Pérez Molina, the general, being implicated in the death of Bishop Juan Gerardi, the man who had just released the &quot;Nunca Más&quot; report, the report of hundreds of pages that indicated that it was Guatemalan military, with its paramilitaries, who were responsible for the overwhelming number of deaths and disappearances in Guatemala through the &#8217;80s.
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN : Well, the evidence that we had &mdash; Bishop Gerardi, of course, with that report, presented the boldest challenge to the army&#8217;s, you know, &quot;piñata of self-forgiveness,&quot; as a lot of people referred to it as, the amnesty. And as the great sort of intelligence guru, General Pérez Molina, sort of seen as almost a father figure among the officer class that would be vulnerable if human rights prosecutions ever came forward.
And the evidence that we had, as eventually &mdash; and the book I wrote, of course, chronicles the long legal struggle of the sort of secular young people in the church human rights office to discover who was responsible for the crime and to eventually &mdash; and really a story of extraordinary triumph, how they eventually managed to get three military men convicted for the murder and investigations ordered into higher-ups, which could eventually include Pérez Molina.
The last government, which was a right-wing government, disbanded the office of the special prosecutor in the Gerardi to keep that case from going forward. But the key witness in the case told me that Otto Pérez Molina had been involved, when I spoke to him when he was in exile in Mexico. I later confirmed that with the head U.N. investigator, a former Spanish intelligence agent, who ran the U.N. mission&#8217;s investigation in Guatemala, who had his own reasons for believing that, including an account which kind of challenged Pérez Molina&#8217;s alibi that he had been in Washington the week of the crime so that he couldn&#8217;t have been responsible. But the U.N. knew that he had, in fact, had dinner with the chief of the U.N. mission three days after the murder, and he had warned &mdash; he said, &quot;Don&#8217;t pay attention to General Pérez Molina&#8217;s alibi that he had a diplomatic passport that says that he&#8217;s in Washington. He&#8217;s an intelligence chief. He uses multiple passports.&quot;
And then, after I brought this out in my book, Guatemalan newspaper reporters in the one honest, feisty newspaper in Guatemala, El Periódico , they took it further and discovered that, yes, indeed, he had seven passports registered under his name, just as that Spaniard had predicted. And also this reporter discovered that that witness had told the U.N. investigator about Pérez Molina&#8217;s involvement in the murder two days after it occurred, during their first interrogation.
AMY GOODMAN : Will there be trials of any of those, perhaps even Pérez Molina, involved in not only the death, the murder of Bishop Gerardi, but so many others? Two hundred thousand people died during that time.
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN : Colom has said in his declarations that really the most important issue to him is ending impunity in Guatemala and strengthening the judicial system. When I spoke to him on the phone a few months ago, he told me that if he became president, he was going to reopen the office of the special prosecutor in the Gerardi case. So I really expect him to do that.
And it&#8217;s really important to mention that for the first time in its history, the United Nations has appointed a commission in Guatemala. It&#8217;s called CICIACS . It&#8217;s a special commission to go after these military intelligence units that General Pérez Molina headed. It&#8217;s a commission to go &mdash; it&#8217;s the Guatemalan commission against impunity, and they&#8217;re charged with going after clandestine security groups and their links to organized crime, which is what this story is all about. And so, U.N. secretary-general has appointed a Spanish judge, who can now assemble a team of foreign and national prosecutors to develop cases against clandestine security forces in Guatemala.
If General Pérez Molina had become president, it would have been &mdash; you would have had the bizarre scenario of CICIACS investigating him and his cronies for these kinds of crimes. Now, with President Colom, there&#8217;s going to be a civilian president who can work hand-in-hand with this U.N. commission to finally take impunity on in Guatemala. So I think it&#8217;s going to be &mdash; I hate to use the word &quot;hopeful&quot; in a country that has suffered as much as Guatemala, but this is really the most hopeful scenario I&#8217;ve seen there in decades.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re talking to Francisco Goldman, and we&#8217;re going to come back to him. He wrote the book The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? It&#8217;s just out. I want to ask about U.S. involvement in a number of these killings, U.S. backing the Guatemalan military and military intelligence, and also the role of the School of the Americas, and the latest news that was just breaking this past week of Pérez Molina being linked to narcotraffickers, coming out in the Guatemalan paper El Periódico . But we&#8217;ll talk about that with him in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;ll be going to Pakistan to find out the latest there on what some have called a coup by the General and President Musharraf. But we&#8217;re staying in Guatemala right now with Francisco Goldman, who is the acclaimed Guatemalan-American novelist, who has written a nonfiction work called The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? , about the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, who had just released a human rights report in 1998. Two days later, he was killed. That report shook the country, naming names, people involved in the killings of &mdash; well, 200,000 people died in the 1980s in Guatemala.
Can you talk about the vice president, Francisco Goldman? You&#8217;re speaking to us right now from Houston. The vice president, a well-known cardiologist in Houston.
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN : Well, he was kind of, I think &mdash; they call him &quot;Doctor Corazón.&quot; He was &mdash; I think that he gave a lot of intellectual and moral credibility to Colom&#8217;s campaign. He&#8217;s kind of a revered figure in Guatemala. And I thought that a lot of his &mdash; the few interviews I saw with him during the campaign were kind of prescient. He was just so eloquent in his &mdash; he was so shocked and stunned. He said, &quot;How can Guatemala, after what this country has been through, even be considering turning power back to the military, to the very same people that plunged this country into such violence and held it there for so many decades?&quot;
And I think that what he &mdash; I think that the countryside &mdash; and especially the message of this election was that the people in the countryside said, &quot;No. Yes, we remember what the military did in this country, and we&#8217;re not going to forget it, and we don&#8217;t care what it says in the city and what the polls say and what the urban newspapers and TV stations are saying, we remember, and we&#8217;re not going to let it happen again.&quot;
And I think &mdash; you know, I received some extraordinary emails. And even &mdash; just to give an indication of how the news got out, even our interview that we did last week on Democracy Now! , that began to circulate on the Internet, where, Amy, you and I spoke about the charges against Bishop Gerardi, and I got an email telling me that in Santiago Atitlán and other towns, young Catholics had downloaded that interview from the internet, the interview in which we spoke about the charges against Pérez Molina in the Gerardi case, translated it and stood outside the cemetery on the Day of the Dead with big photocopied piles of the transcript of the interview, handing it out to people, because the Guatemalan media wouldn&#8217;t report it. So people took it into their own hands to get the truth out.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re talking to Francisco Goldman. You also said at the end of that interview last week, Francisco Goldman, that it was just breaking in a Guatemalan newspaper, links between Pérez Molina, the defeated presidential candidate now, and narcotraffickers.
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN : Right.
AMY GOODMAN : What is that about?
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN : Well, you know, when you really talk about that whole world of military intelligence and the reason they&#8217;ve held onto power in Guatemala since, you know, the years of the war, right, because during the war the CIA empowered them essentially to be the Cold War front line, the clandestine groups that would really take the war, you know, to opposition figures, and that&#8217;s the death squads, and so forth and, you know.
Now, why in peacetime, despite the fact that the peace accords say that military intelligence &mdash; that intelligence should be in the hands of civilians, why do they so desperately hold onto power? The answer to that lies in the fact that even the DEA says that up to 70 percent of the cocaine that reaches the United States comes through Guatemala. And the reason that happens is because of this clandestine world of military intelligence power. They basically went from working for the CIA to working for the narco cartels, essentially. And so, everybody in this world is kind of implicated. That&#8217;s what power is about: connections to organized crime, to mafias.
And Pérez Molina comes out of that world. And there&#8217;s been lots of stories and lots of strange incidents linking him to that. And so, some young reporters who had been investigating his ties to narcotraffickers found some evidence. I haven&#8217;t seen the story. They wanted to publish it. The newspaper decided not to publish it. No other Guatemalan paper would publish it. They began to get death threats. The newspaper they worked for began to get threats. And they went to the Human Rights Commission to denounce what was happening to them, and the story started to get out in wire services. And that was yet one more allegation against Pérez Molina to surface in the last days of the crime.
As these allegations against Pérez Molina began to surface in the last weeks of the election &mdash; it was really interesting &mdash; he suddenly went very quiet, and he ducked his last few debates. He didn&#8217;t want to answer questions about the Gerardi case or about any of the other allegations that were beginning to come out against him. And that might be yet another thing that cost him the election.
AMY GOODMAN : Francisco Goldman, the issue of the U.S. support for the death squads in Guatemala through the 1980s &mdash;
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN : Right.
AMY GOODMAN : The U.N. report on the killings did not talk about the United States. Did &quot;Nunca Más,&quot; did Juan Gerardi&#8217;s report? And what is that, as we move into this month, November, where there is the annual protest at the School of the Americas outside of Fort Benning &mdash; now has a new name &mdash; where thousands of people go to protest?
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN : Well, you know, the highest man convicted in the Gerardi case, Colonel Lima Estrada, a graduate of the School of the Americas. General Pérez Molina, a graduate of the School of the Americas, also known to have been on the CIA payroll during the war years.
This is &mdash; you know, this is the &mdash; early on in the &#8217;60s, when they decided that they were going to turn Guatemala into kind of a front line, you know, Cold War proxy state, they empowered these military intelligence units to guard U.S. interests, and they became a kind of Frankenstein monster that got away from U.S. control and became what they are today. And their roots are directly in that kind of U.S. support that goes all the way back to the 1960s and the immediate aftermath of the 1954 coup.
It&#8217;s important to remember that even now, with Colom, this is the first time that Guatemala &mdash; even though he&#8217;s left of center, this is the first time Guatemala has had a left-leaning leader since 1954, when the U.S. CIA -backed coup deposed Jacobo Árbenz as president of Guatemala.
AMY GOODMAN : Talking about that parallel, if there is one, the new president, Colom, says his first meeting will be with leaders from the Mayan community and that he would implement the little-used provision in 1996 peace accord allowing the government to buy property to redistribute to landless farmers &mdash; this according to Héctor Tobar in the Los Angeles Times . What about the significance of this? Of course, in 1954, when Árbenz was overthrown, it was done by the United States with the support of United Fruit Company &mdash; or rather, to support the United Fruit Company.
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN : Right. Well, you know, I don&#8217;t think we&#8217;re going to see from Colom nearly as &mdash; I don&#8217;t think the political space is there for him to conduct the kind of land reform the Árbenz government did, you know, leading up to the 1954 coup. But Colom, that&#8217;s where his support is. He used to run FONAPAZ , which was an institute that was responsible for helping Indians and rural people to gain possession of land, even in, you know, the oppressive Guatemala of the recent past. That&#8217;s why he had &mdash; one of the reasons he had so much support in the highlands.
And I think he&#8217;s very sincere in his desire to do everything he can to get more land into the hands of Guatemala&#8217;s &mdash; you know, Guatemala has probably one of the most unequal land distribution rates in the hemisphere. It easily does. And I think that he&#8217;s going to hopefully push the envelope as far as he can in that respect. And he certainly owes the Mayan population in Guatemala everything. They gave him his presidency. So I would expect that he&#8217;s going to feel a great obligation to give as much back as he can. And this is one way to do it.
AMY GOODMAN : Francisco Goldman, I want to thank you for being with us, acclaimed Guatemalan American novelist, now has written his first nonfiction book. It&#8217;s called The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? Francisco Goldman, speaking to us from Houston, where the new vice president of Guatemala, the well-known cardiologist, Dr. Espada, now the vice president of Guatemala, has run his practice. AMYGOODMAN: In a few minutes, we’ll be going to Pakistan, but right now to Guatemala, where the centrist candidate Álvaro Colom has won the presidential election, this according to official election results released on Monday. In an upset victory, Colom beat the retired General Otto Pérez Molina on Sunday’s runoff election.

Colom ran on an anti-poverty platform, won close to 53 percent of the vote. In his victory speech, Colom thanked his supporters.

PRESIDENT-ELECT ÁLVARO COLOM: [translated] We won against all odds, against everything, because truth was on our side, because everyone’s work and each one of you was efficient, because we didn’t cheat or deceive. I said that we would win by between 4 and 7 percent, and we won by 5.2 percent.

AMYGOODMAN: General Pérez Molina, who led in the polls until last week, ran on an anti-crime platform. The ex-head of army intelligence, he promised to expand the police force by half and to use the military to fight crime. He commanded troops in one of Guatemala’s most violent areas and has been implicated in a number of political crimes. Pérez Molina conceded defeat in a news conference after the results were announced.

GENERALOTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] We said we would respect the results given by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and that we would respect the will of the Guatemalans expressed through the ballots, and that’s what we are doing. We are present here.

AMYGOODMAN: To discuss the significance of the election and the task ahead for President-elect Álvaro Colom, we turn now to Guatemalan-American writer Francisco Goldman. His latest book is The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? It implicates the defeated presidential candidate, General Pérez Molina, in the 1998 murder of the beloved Guatemalan human rights activist, Bishop Juan Gerardi. Francisco Goldman joins us again, now from Houston, Texas. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Francisco.

FRANCISCOGOLDMAN: Hi, Amy.

AMYGOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. First, your response to the election results?

FRANCISCOGOLDMAN: It’s — as a lot of my friends emailed me from Guatemala yesterday, Guatemalan democracy was saved. The country was on the verge of — people thought that this General Pérez Molina was going to be elected and possibly take them back to some equivalent of the hard-line military rule of 1980s. But the countryside, in this vote, defeated the city. And this is the first time in Guatemalan history, really, that the indigenous people in the highlands have really voted as a bloc and carried, by surprise, Colom to victory.

AMYGOODMAN: Now, talk about the significance of this. Isn’t it the first time that the president did not win the city, but the countryside?

FRANCISCOGOLDMAN: It’s definitely the very first time that the Indian population, the Mayan Indian population, the rural population, have really decisively backed one candidate. And everybody — the capital, which, as you know, is more mixed racially and economically, and etc., is quite separate in existence from its countryside.

And in Guatemala City, the media, all the television stations, virtually all the newspapers, which are all owned by pro-business, right-wing-type, you know, kinds of people who were heavily backing the general and, let’s say, not quite allowing news that might harm the general’s campaign to get into their media.

AMYGOODMAN: We spoke last week before the election, and you gave quite a frightening profile of the candidate who has been defeated, the general, Pérez Molina. Can you briefly summarize who he is again?

FRANCISCOGOLDMAN: General Pérez Molina was, during — you know, during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, it had probably — the army, which ruled and dominated throughout that war, gave Guatemala probably the worst human rights record in Latin America and among the worst in the world. 200,000 civilians were killed. A lot of the worst atrocities were committed by Guatemala’s intelligence units, especially the G-2 and the EMP, the Presidential Military Staff. That’s where the death squads came from. That’s where the illegal detention centers, the torture centers, came from.

And General Pérez Molina, a graduate of the School of the Americas and so forth, was a chief of both of those entities. And even in reporting in places like The New York Times, you know, very vicious crimes that he was responsible for have been reported on.

But in the 1996 peace accords, the army, as the victor, insisted as a condition for peace — and acquiescent guerrillas agreed — that there should be a blanket amnesty for all human rights crimes, which means that he really couldn’t be prosecuted for a lot of those crimes. That was eventually breached when the U.N. declared crimes against humanity had occurred in Guatemala. There can be no amnesty for crimes against humanity.

But impunity still reigns in Guatemala to a great degree, and the courts just haven’t been strong enough to carry human rights trials forward. So what really became the issue, though, in the general’s campaign were not his wartime crimes, but news beginning to filter out about his peacetime crimes, which included the allegations that are made in a part of my book about his involvement in the murder of Bishop Gerardi, but also corruption charges and involvement in other crimes. These kinds of things began to bubble up on the fringes, but the pro-Pérez Molina media in Guatemala kept it out of the mainstream news down there. But it found its way into the population by other routes, let’s say.

AMYGOODMAN: Once again, talk about the evidence you have for Pérez Molina, the general, being implicated in the death of Bishop Juan Gerardi, the man who had just released the "Nunca Más" report, the report of hundreds of pages that indicated that it was Guatemalan military, with its paramilitaries, who were responsible for the overwhelming number of deaths and disappearances in Guatemala through the ’80s.

FRANCISCOGOLDMAN: Well, the evidence that we had — Bishop Gerardi, of course, with that report, presented the boldest challenge to the army’s, you know, "piñata of self-forgiveness," as a lot of people referred to it as, the amnesty. And as the great sort of intelligence guru, General Pérez Molina, sort of seen as almost a father figure among the officer class that would be vulnerable if human rights prosecutions ever came forward.

And the evidence that we had, as eventually — and the book I wrote, of course, chronicles the long legal struggle of the sort of secular young people in the church human rights office to discover who was responsible for the crime and to eventually — and really a story of extraordinary triumph, how they eventually managed to get three military men convicted for the murder and investigations ordered into higher-ups, which could eventually include Pérez Molina.

The last government, which was a right-wing government, disbanded the office of the special prosecutor in the Gerardi to keep that case from going forward. But the key witness in the case told me that Otto Pérez Molina had been involved, when I spoke to him when he was in exile in Mexico. I later confirmed that with the head U.N. investigator, a former Spanish intelligence agent, who ran the U.N. mission’s investigation in Guatemala, who had his own reasons for believing that, including an account which kind of challenged Pérez Molina’s alibi that he had been in Washington the week of the crime so that he couldn’t have been responsible. But the U.N. knew that he had, in fact, had dinner with the chief of the U.N. mission three days after the murder, and he had warned — he said, "Don’t pay attention to General Pérez Molina’s alibi that he had a diplomatic passport that says that he’s in Washington. He’s an intelligence chief. He uses multiple passports."

And then, after I brought this out in my book, Guatemalan newspaper reporters in the one honest, feisty newspaper in Guatemala, El Periódico, they took it further and discovered that, yes, indeed, he had seven passports registered under his name, just as that Spaniard had predicted. And also this reporter discovered that that witness had told the U.N. investigator about Pérez Molina’s involvement in the murder two days after it occurred, during their first interrogation.

AMYGOODMAN: Will there be trials of any of those, perhaps even Pérez Molina, involved in not only the death, the murder of Bishop Gerardi, but so many others? Two hundred thousand people died during that time.

FRANCISCOGOLDMAN: Colom has said in his declarations that really the most important issue to him is ending impunity in Guatemala and strengthening the judicial system. When I spoke to him on the phone a few months ago, he told me that if he became president, he was going to reopen the office of the special prosecutor in the Gerardi case. So I really expect him to do that.

And it’s really important to mention that for the first time in its history, the United Nations has appointed a commission in Guatemala. It’s called CICIACS. It’s a special commission to go after these military intelligence units that General Pérez Molina headed. It’s a commission to go — it’s the Guatemalan commission against impunity, and they’re charged with going after clandestine security groups and their links to organized crime, which is what this story is all about. And so, U.N. secretary-general has appointed a Spanish judge, who can now assemble a team of foreign and national prosecutors to develop cases against clandestine security forces in Guatemala.

If General Pérez Molina had become president, it would have been — you would have had the bizarre scenario of CICIACS investigating him and his cronies for these kinds of crimes. Now, with President Colom, there’s going to be a civilian president who can work hand-in-hand with this U.N. commission to finally take impunity on in Guatemala. So I think it’s going to be — I hate to use the word "hopeful" in a country that has suffered as much as Guatemala, but this is really the most hopeful scenario I’ve seen there in decades.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re talking to Francisco Goldman, and we’re going to come back to him. He wrote the book The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? It’s just out. I want to ask about U.S. involvement in a number of these killings, U.S. backing the Guatemalan military and military intelligence, and also the role of the School of the Americas, and the latest news that was just breaking this past week of Pérez Molina being linked to narcotraffickers, coming out in the Guatemalan paper El Periódico. But we’ll talk about that with him in a minute.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: We’ll be going to Pakistan to find out the latest there on what some have called a coup by the General and President Musharraf. But we’re staying in Guatemala right now with Francisco Goldman, who is the acclaimed Guatemalan-American novelist, who has written a nonfiction work called The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop?, about the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, who had just released a human rights report in 1998. Two days later, he was killed. That report shook the country, naming names, people involved in the killings of — well, 200,000 people died in the 1980s in Guatemala.

Can you talk about the vice president, Francisco Goldman? You’re speaking to us right now from Houston. The vice president, a well-known cardiologist in Houston.

FRANCISCOGOLDMAN: Well, he was kind of, I think — they call him "Doctor Corazón." He was — I think that he gave a lot of intellectual and moral credibility to Colom’s campaign. He’s kind of a revered figure in Guatemala. And I thought that a lot of his — the few interviews I saw with him during the campaign were kind of prescient. He was just so eloquent in his — he was so shocked and stunned. He said, "How can Guatemala, after what this country has been through, even be considering turning power back to the military, to the very same people that plunged this country into such violence and held it there for so many decades?"

And I think that what he — I think that the countryside — and especially the message of this election was that the people in the countryside said, "No. Yes, we remember what the military did in this country, and we’re not going to forget it, and we don’t care what it says in the city and what the polls say and what the urban newspapers and TV stations are saying, we remember, and we’re not going to let it happen again."

And I think — you know, I received some extraordinary emails. And even — just to give an indication of how the news got out, even our interview that we did last week on Democracy Now!, that began to circulate on the Internet, where, Amy, you and I spoke about the charges against Bishop Gerardi, and I got an email telling me that in Santiago Atitlán and other towns, young Catholics had downloaded that interview from the internet, the interview in which we spoke about the charges against Pérez Molina in the Gerardi case, translated it and stood outside the cemetery on the Day of the Dead with big photocopied piles of the transcript of the interview, handing it out to people, because the Guatemalan media wouldn’t report it. So people took it into their own hands to get the truth out.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re talking to Francisco Goldman. You also said at the end of that interview last week, Francisco Goldman, that it was just breaking in a Guatemalan newspaper, links between Pérez Molina, the defeated presidential candidate now, and narcotraffickers.

FRANCISCOGOLDMAN: Right.

AMYGOODMAN: What is that about?

FRANCISCOGOLDMAN: Well, you know, when you really talk about that whole world of military intelligence and the reason they’ve held onto power in Guatemala since, you know, the years of the war, right, because during the war the CIA empowered them essentially to be the Cold War front line, the clandestine groups that would really take the war, you know, to opposition figures, and that’s the death squads, and so forth and, you know.

Now, why in peacetime, despite the fact that the peace accords say that military intelligence — that intelligence should be in the hands of civilians, why do they so desperately hold onto power? The answer to that lies in the fact that even the DEA says that up to 70 percent of the cocaine that reaches the United States comes through Guatemala. And the reason that happens is because of this clandestine world of military intelligence power. They basically went from working for the CIA to working for the narco cartels, essentially. And so, everybody in this world is kind of implicated. That’s what power is about: connections to organized crime, to mafias.

And Pérez Molina comes out of that world. And there’s been lots of stories and lots of strange incidents linking him to that. And so, some young reporters who had been investigating his ties to narcotraffickers found some evidence. I haven’t seen the story. They wanted to publish it. The newspaper decided not to publish it. No other Guatemalan paper would publish it. They began to get death threats. The newspaper they worked for began to get threats. And they went to the Human Rights Commission to denounce what was happening to them, and the story started to get out in wire services. And that was yet one more allegation against Pérez Molina to surface in the last days of the crime.

As these allegations against Pérez Molina began to surface in the last weeks of the election — it was really interesting — he suddenly went very quiet, and he ducked his last few debates. He didn’t want to answer questions about the Gerardi case or about any of the other allegations that were beginning to come out against him. And that might be yet another thing that cost him the election.

AMYGOODMAN: Francisco Goldman, the issue of the U.S. support for the death squads in Guatemala through the 1980s —

FRANCISCOGOLDMAN: Right.

AMYGOODMAN: The U.N. report on the killings did not talk about the United States. Did "Nunca Más," did Juan Gerardi’s report? And what is that, as we move into this month, November, where there is the annual protest at the School of the Americas outside of Fort Benning — now has a new name — where thousands of people go to protest?

FRANCISCOGOLDMAN: Well, you know, the highest man convicted in the Gerardi case, Colonel Lima Estrada, a graduate of the School of the Americas. General Pérez Molina, a graduate of the School of the Americas, also known to have been on the CIA payroll during the war years.

This is — you know, this is the — early on in the ’60s, when they decided that they were going to turn Guatemala into kind of a front line, you know, Cold War proxy state, they empowered these military intelligence units to guard U.S. interests, and they became a kind of Frankenstein monster that got away from U.S. control and became what they are today. And their roots are directly in that kind of U.S. support that goes all the way back to the 1960s and the immediate aftermath of the 1954 coup.

It’s important to remember that even now, with Colom, this is the first time that Guatemala — even though he’s left of center, this is the first time Guatemala has had a left-leaning leader since 1954, when the U.S. CIA-backed coup deposed Jacobo Árbenz as president of Guatemala.

AMYGOODMAN: Talking about that parallel, if there is one, the new president, Colom, says his first meeting will be with leaders from the Mayan community and that he would implement the little-used provision in 1996 peace accord allowing the government to buy property to redistribute to landless farmers — this according to Héctor Tobar in the Los Angeles Times. What about the significance of this? Of course, in 1954, when Árbenz was overthrown, it was done by the United States with the support of United Fruit Company — or rather, to support the United Fruit Company.

FRANCISCOGOLDMAN: Right. Well, you know, I don’t think we’re going to see from Colom nearly as — I don’t think the political space is there for him to conduct the kind of land reform the Árbenz government did, you know, leading up to the 1954 coup. But Colom, that’s where his support is. He used to run FONAPAZ, which was an institute that was responsible for helping Indians and rural people to gain possession of land, even in, you know, the oppressive Guatemala of the recent past. That’s why he had — one of the reasons he had so much support in the highlands.

And I think he’s very sincere in his desire to do everything he can to get more land into the hands of Guatemala’s — you know, Guatemala has probably one of the most unequal land distribution rates in the hemisphere. It easily does. And I think that he’s going to hopefully push the envelope as far as he can in that respect. And he certainly owes the Mayan population in Guatemala everything. They gave him his presidency. So I would expect that he’s going to feel a great obligation to give as much back as he can. And this is one way to do it.

AMYGOODMAN: Francisco Goldman, I want to thank you for being with us, acclaimed Guatemalan American novelist, now has written his first nonfiction book. It’s called The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? Francisco Goldman, speaking to us from Houston, where the new vice president of Guatemala, the well-known cardiologist, Dr. Espada, now the vice president of Guatemala, has run his practice.

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Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500Bolivian President Evo Morales on Indigenous Rights, Climate Change, Iraq, Establishing Diplomatic Relations with Iran, Che Guevara's Legacy and Morehttp://www.democracynow.org/2007/9/26/bolivian_president_evo_morales_on_indigenous
tag:democracynow.org,2007-09-26:en/story/84bf08 AMY GOODMAN : Today, a Democracy Now! special: We spend the hour with Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia. He traveled to New York this week, where he&#8217;s scheduled to speak before the United Nations General Assembly today. On Monday, he addressed a high-level U.N. meeting on climate change, during which he accused what he called &quot;predatory capitalism&quot; of affecting the environment.
Evo Morales first spoke before the U.N. General Assembly last year, where he dramatically brandished a coca leaf and vowed never to yield to U.S. pressure to criminalize coca production. Morales&#8217;s rise to power began with his leadership of the coca growers union in Bolivia and his high-profile opposition to the U.S.-funded eradication of the coca crop. He helped to lead the street demonstrations by Indian and union groups that toppled the country&#8217;s last two presidents.
An Aymara Indian, Evo Morales became the country&#8217;s first indigenous president when he was elected nearly two years ago with more popular support than any Bolivian leader in decades. Since then, he has moved to nationalize Bolivia&#8217;s oil and gas industry and is seeking a new constitution that would grant more power to Bolivia&#8217;s indigenous majority.
Today, we spend the hour with Evo Morales, talking about indigenous rights, biofuels, the Iraq War, establishing diplomatic relations with Iran, and the enduring legacy of Che Guevara on Latin America. Democracy Now! &#8217;s Juan González and I sat down with President Morales at the Bolivian mission here in New York. I began by asking President Morales what his message is this year to the U.N. General Assembly.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] Last year was our first experience, my first time at the United Nations, as well as my first time in the United States. And as the coca leaf stands for and is symbolic of the struggle of the peoples for land and for their sovereignty, so last time I was here, it was my responsibility to talk about how it is that I came to become president of Bolivia.
But today, the most important thing is to talk about the changes that we&#8217;re forging in democracy through this cultural and democratic revolution in my country and at the same time share my enormous concern and to talk about things that are not just a regional or a local problem, but a global problem, and that&#8217;s the environment.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: One of the things that has happened, changes, obviously, is that just a few days ago, more than a week ago, the United Nations General Assembly passed an important declaration in terms of indigenous rights. Article 34, specifically, says that indigenous peoples have rights to promote, develop and maintain their institutional structures and their customs. How important is this to Bolivia in the current writing of the new constitution that you&#8217;re involved in now?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] First of all, we&#8217;d like to salute, thank and recognize the countries of the world that approved and voted for this Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, just as 50, 60 years ago, the United Nations for the first time recognized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it&#8217;s only now, over 500 years later, that indigenous people&#8217;s rights are being recognized. Happily, there were only a few countries that didn&#8217;t support this declaration.
And so, I want to say to the indigenous peoples, but also to the other peoples who live in the cities, that this is a very important thing that the struggle for indigenous people&#8217;s rights has not been in vain. And it was very important to get organized to mobilize. It took over 20 years, but, working together, people were able to do this, to approve this declaration and establish that we are people that have rights just like anyone else on earth.
In some cases, it will be to recognize the rights of minorities in some countries, this declaration. In my country, it&#8217;s to make sure that the majority is respected, and it will be respect for their institutions, for their structures. And this is an important contribution to unity within our country, but not because we have a declaration behind us recognized by the United Nations. It&#8217;s important that, even though this declaration exists, that doesn&#8217;t mean that we, as the majority, are going to be vengeful or use this as the majority.
I want you all to know, through the means of communication like yourself, I want the people of the United States and the people of the world to understand that the indigenous movement is not vengeful. We want to live together, respecting the difference and the diversity that we have. Some of the people in our country, when they saw that this declaration that came out that&#8217;s not just a declaration recognizing indigenous peoples, but also right to land, to self-determination, they think that we&#8217;re going to take a vengeful attitude, and I&#8217;m here to say never.
AMY GOODMAN : What do you think the message was of the four countries that voted no: Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the United States?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] It will be important for not the countries, but the people who lead those countries, their ambassadors, their leaders, to reflect and to embrace a recognition of indigenous people&#8217;s rights. I&#8217;m convinced that indigenous peoples are the moral reserve of humanity. So amongst indigenous peoples, there&#8217;s not a mentality of being individualist, personalist or egotistical, and therefore there&#8217;s not an attitude of trying to take over resources and control them for themselves. How nice it would be if those four countries, or better, for the presidents of those four countries, and along with the social forces, and especially the indigenous peoples, join together to save humanity.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But in practical terms, implementing this in your country is obviously creating many issues. You have 36 different nationalities among the native people. And the battle now, the constitutional battle over whether you&#8217;re going to have provincial autonomy or autonomy for these indigenous nations, how will that work itself out?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] First of all, dialogue and concerting, coming together. You&#8217;re right, though, when you recognize that there are some small groups in my country that still don&#8217;t recognize exclusion and racism as it exists in our country. And that&#8217;s why I call on the countries that not only supported this declaration, but also the countries that didn&#8217;t support this declaration, to come together and move forward to recognizing indigenous people&#8217;s rights, but without excluding anyone.
My government will guarantee departmental or state-level autonomies, but also local-level autonomies and indigenous people&#8217;s autonomies. A lot will depend on the specificities of these different regions. Sometimes there will be regional autonomies and local autonomies; sometimes there will be regional autonomies, as well as indigenous autonomies. And we&#8217;ll have to figure out how these different autonomies are going to work together. When we made our initial demands as indigenous, original peoples, there were people who reacted to and rejected our demands. But I want to tell these people now &mdash; and some people are originally from a place that dates back to a thousand years, some are much more contemporary, but we all have to learn how to live together.
AMY GOODMAN : Bolivian President Evo Morales. We&#8217;ll come back to our conversation in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : We return to our conversation with the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales. He&#8217;s addressing the United Nations General Assembly today. On Monday, he addressed a high-level U.N. meeting on climate change. Over 80 world leaders attended; President Bush did not. In it, Evo Morales spoke in his speech on Monday about referring to the need to prevent industrialized nations with their gas emissions from continuing harming the planet.
Democracy Now! , Juan González and I sat down with President Morales at the Bolivian mission. Juan asked President Morales about the issue of biofuels.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I&#8217;d like to ask you about the message that you&#8217;re going to be bringing to the United Nations, as well, over the issue of the use of agricultural products for biofuels, that clearly in Brazil President Lula has a different perspective. He is promoting the use of biofuels. What is your perspective on this issue?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] From the time that biofuels were first talked about, we&#8217;ve seen a spiraling process of speculation of land. There&#8217;s a whole speculation on grains like wheat, not only at the regional level within countries, but also internationally. So, therefore, the cost of agricultural products rises. And this is a product of that moment from which, going forward, people have been talking about biofuels.
And personally, in our movement, as well, we&#8217;re convinced that agricultural products should not be dedicated, directed towards automobiles, cars, and that lands be dedicated towards old rusted vehicles. First to people, before automobiles. And that&#8217;s our difference.
And we want to debate this, but we don&#8217;t want to debate it just as governments or presidents. We want to debate with our peoples, with the social forces in our countries, and I would even dare to say, at the South American regional level, submit this to a referendum of the peoples of South America and let the people say yes or no to different biofuels. This is something I&#8217;ve learned from Subcomandante Marcos, from his messages &mdash; that is, to govern obeying the people. That means to govern, but respecting the different proposals that social forces put on the table, because sometimes when a proposal is put on the table between presidents, arguments arise, and this can even generate confusion amongst people sometimes. And that&#8217;s why I consider it to be very important that people decide with their votes in a referendum about what the future biofuels is going to be. That would be the most democratic thing.
AMY GOODMAN : Mr. President, you&#8217;ve just established diplomatic relations with Iran. When the Iranian President Ahmadinejad leaves the United Nations General Assembly, New York, this week, he will first go to Bolivia. Why did you establish diplomatic relations?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] First of all, it&#8217;s important our peoples are from the culture of dialogue, so we have diplomatic relations with the United States, we have diplomatic relations with Cuba, just as we have diplomatic relations with France and with Iran, but, above all, diplomatic relations for life, for humanity, for peace with social justice.
In my country, we&#8217;re going to be opening commercial and diplomatic relations to establish relationships of complementarity so that we can resolve the social and economic problems that we confront. We&#8217;re never going to establish diplomatic relations to wage aggression or to hurt or to declare wars or to get involved in arms races. We&#8217;re not of the culture of death.
Moreover, I respect the technology, the industrial development in the area of gas and oil in Iran, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve seen as interesting, that we can work together on these issues. And I&#8217;d like to agree with you. We haven&#8217;t ever thought about other issues in our relations. As far as I know, it&#8217;s not a country that&#8217;s sending troops to end other people&#8217;s lives in other countries. And I admire Cuba very much, for example, which sends people to other countries to help save lives.
AMY GOODMAN : Just to follow up on that point, has the United States weighed in? Has the United States responded to your diplomatic relations with Iran? And what do you think of the U.S. talking about perhaps attacking Iran?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] The United States, nor any other country, can observe or comment or have anything to say about the relationships that we have with any other countries. We&#8217;re a small country, but we&#8217;re a sovereign country with dignity, with the right to establish relations with whoever we want. If the United States government reacts, if they would have reacted, it would suggest that they are still thinking that Latin American countries need to be subordinate to the United States. But happily, in Latin America, there are countries with democracies that are liberating democracies, not subordinate democracies.
AMY GOODMAN : Your vice president has denounced U.S. funding of right-wing think tanks in Bolivia as intervening in internal affairs of your country.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] Former ministers and vice minister of the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who, as you know, escaped to the United States, and the former President Banzer, who, may he rest in peace, as well as former President Tuto Quiroga, these former ministers are financed through foundations, NGOs, to create this counterweight to the government of Evo Morales. It&#8217;s impressive. And what we&#8217;re asking for is that all international cooperation be transparent, that it come through formally the central government.
AMY GOODMAN : What are those groups pushing for?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] First of all, these neoliberals, the right-wing organizations, the ones who sold out the country, as we say in Bolivia, is to exhaust the image of Evo Morales especially. And so, if they have objected, if they want to exhaust Evo Morales, it&#8217;s to be done with the government of Evo Morales. And these things circulated on the Internet, then pamphlets, [inaudible]; verbatim they say, &quot;We have to overthrow this Indian (and leave that blank),&quot; because I can&#8217;t repeat those words on the radio.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I&#8217;d like to ask you about the student protests that broke out recently there and the continuing battle over writing a new constitution. It&#8217;s been more than 13 months, and the Constituent Assembly, I understand, now is going to start meeting again. But the battle, especially over this issue of the capital for Bolivia, what is the significance of the battle over whether Sucre or La Paz should be the capital of Bolivia?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] Bolivia was founded in 1825, and the people who were participating, they were only 8 percent of the population; they were all mestizos or criollos. But who fought for the independence from Spain? It was that other 92 percent; it was the indigenous peoples. So we proposed to re-found the country, indigenous peoples, non-indigenous peoples, professional peoples, nonprofessional peoples, but to transform the country. Therefore, there are sectors that are seeking to undermine or make sure that the Constituent Assembly fails.
The enemies of this deep structural transformation that we&#8217;re pursuing, some of them have entered, are members of the Constituent Assembly, and they&#8217;ve been working from the very beginning, when the Constituent Assembly started on 6th of August, 2006, to undermine the process through the demand for two-thirds, the demand for autonomy, and now the demand to move the capital of the country.
This issue of where the capital is going to be located is not a national issue. It&#8217;s not a problem for the government. It&#8217;s an issue for just two departments. And there are families that don&#8217;t love their country and who are not working for the majorities, who are working for those people who have not been respected, the indigenous majorities, they&#8217;re talking about where the capital is going to be located as a tool to shut down the Constituent Assembly.
But what are we working for? What are we betting on? First, as the government and also as the indigenous movement, to make sure that the Constituent Assembly concludes successfully. It&#8217;s the best way to find unity, equality and justice, to forge that in my country.
And I would like to remember the words of a businessman, actually, from Bolivia. What did he say before the Constituent Assembly? &quot;I&#8217;d rather have rocks in my door than bullets.&quot; What does that mean? That I would rather have these sorts of popular demonstrations and protests happening than a civil war, a fighting war with bullets.
And now, so that we have neither the protests nor the shooting war with bullets, we&#8217;re pursuing this deep structural transformation through a democratic process, which is the Constituent Assembly. How are we doing this? Through the creation of writing a new constitution for the country.
Of course, it&#8217;s going to be difficult to have equality, but to make those differences between people smaller is possible. Early in the process, only weeks into the process, they said that Evo Morales was not going to respect private property. That was another attack, another attempt to undermine and cause the Constituent Assembly to fail. With the powerful people above, what we&#8217;re trying to do is lift up the people, the humble people, from below, through using the strategic natural resources that we have to put them on a more equal footing.
And the other thing that they can&#8217;t accept is, how is it that what they call the Indians, that they feel for the country and they&#8217;re working for their people and that this Indian is governing well? This is something they can&#8217;t tolerate. Two facts: The last time that Bolivia had a budget surplus was in the 1960s during a boom, a tin boom, and we&#8217;ve been over 60 years always with a fiscal deficit. Last year, for the first time, in my first year of government, we have a budget surplus, and Bolivia&#8217;s international reserves never were more than $1 billion. And this year we&#8217;re approaching $5 billion in international reserves. And the modification of the hydrocarbons gas and oil law, which cost us blood, thereafter the nationalization of gas and oil, has allowed Bolivia to improve our revenues, the revenues for the country. An example: In 2005, Bolivia only received $300 million &mdash; $300 million in 2005 in revenues from state gas and oil, and this year we&#8217;re going to be receiving more than $2 billion in revenues from gas and oil. And this is something they can&#8217;t accept.
A political class, for them, government was business. It was enrichment. What they can&#8217;t accept is that our corruption in Bolivia has been declining. In the past, Bolivia was considered in the number two position in terms of the championship for the most corrupt country. Many international institutions have recognized that corruption is on the decline in Bolivia. And what these groups don&#8217;t accept is that this &mdash; what they call an &quot;Indian&quot; can change Bolivia, bring dignity to Bolivia.
And in this situation, some sectors are talking about the re-election of Evo Morales, and so this is something that would have to be become constitutionally permitted. But what do the right, the neoliberal, the opposition, say to this? And they say we can negotiate anything, but not the re-election of this Indian. This is the problem. It&#8217;s not a problem of where the capital of the country is located. And, of course, they never liked groups like the ones that you make reference to that will travel from Santa Cruz to Sucre to agitate, to stir up these issues.
AMY GOODMAN : Bolivian President Evo Morales. We&#8217;ll return to the conclusion, where he talks about the war in Iraq and the legacy of Che Guevara. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : We return to our conversation with the Bolivian President Evo Morales. The Bolivian Supreme Court recently asked the government to start extradition proceedings for the former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who lives here in the United States in Miami. They also asked for an order for him not to be allowed to go to another country, but to be sent back to Bolivia. I asked President Morales what the former president is guilty of and whether he thinks the United States will extradite him.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] First of all, the United States cannot, should not receive, protect delinquents from any part of the world. It is unconscionable that the United States, a democratic country, would be protecting international criminals like Posada Carriles. The process has to do with two issues: first of all, human rights, and second of all, for economic damages done to the state. So people who massacre peoples, that violate human rights and do economic damage to countries and their economies have to go to jail. The United States shouldn&#8217;t be sitting there waiting for a process to be put into motion, but rather should kick these people out so that they can be submitted to justice.
I hope the United States respects these norms and respects the decision of our Supreme Court. But here, we have an experience. The last military dictator was sent to jail. And since that time, in Bolivia, no member of the military dares to threaten a coup d&#8217;état. Likewise, any democratic government that violates human rights, that massacres people or that does economic damage to the state should also be subject to these sorts of processes, and their leaders should be put in jail, so that they never dare to do it again either.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Mr. President, you said a few moments ago that you&#8217;d rather have protesters throwing rocks than using guns. In a few weeks, it will be the 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara. He died in Bolivia. Looking back at it &mdash; you were a child then &mdash; what is your sense of the legacy of Che Guevara to the people of Latin America?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] First of all, in the &#39;40s, in the &#8217;50s, in the &#8217;60s &mdash; of course, when I hadn&#39;t been born yet &mdash; my first perception was that people rose up in arms to struggle against the empire. Now, I see quite the opposite, that it&#8217;s the empire that&#8217;s raising up arms against the peoples. What I think is that back then, that the peoples, they got organized and struggled, looking for justice, for equality. And now I think that these transformations, these structural transformations, are being forged through democracies.
And from these two points of view, Che Guevara continues to be a symbol of someone who gave his life for the peoples, when in Bolivia and in other countries around the world reigned military dictatorships. So that&#8217;s why it&#8217;s amazing to see that all over the world Che Guevara is still there, 40 years later. But now, we&#8217;re living in other times. But to value and recognize that thinking, that struggle, and if we recognize and we value it, that doesn&#8217;t mean it means to mechanically follow the steps that he took in terms of military uprising.
And that&#8217;s where, for example, I respect Fidel Castro. In 2003, I was invited to a conference in Havana, Cuba. And Fidel said the following: &quot;Don&#8217;t do what I&#8217;ve done. Do what Chávez is doing: transformations through a constituent assembly.&quot; I think it was a good teaching, because we&#8217;ve seen the constituent assemblies in Venezuela, in Ecuador and now in Bolivia, as well, that through democracy we can achieve structural transformations.
AMY GOODMAN : What is the effect of the war on Iraq in Latin America, in Bolivia, in particular?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] There is a feeling that leads to the rejection, the repudiation of the United States government. This intervention of the United States in Iraq helps anti-imperialist thinking and feeling to grow. The pretext of fighting against terrorism and for security, with this pretext, they intervene and create all these deaths. But there are also other issues, economic issues, underlying it. I feel that we&#8217;re in a times of not looking to how to extinguish lives, but rather how to save lives.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I&#8217;d like to ask you about the issue of global warming. It&#8217;s become a major increasing discussion in many governments and around the world. From the perspective of the indigenous people of Bolivia, the future of the planet? And what policies must be adopted, especially by the industrialized countries?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] So if globalization does not admit difference and pluralism, if it&#8217;s a selective globalization, therefore it will be almost impossible to resolve environmental issues and save humanity. The most important contribution that indigenous peoples can make is to live in harmony with Mother Earth. We say the &quot;Mother Earth,&quot; because the earth gives us life, and neither the Mother Earth nor life can be a commodity. So we&#8217;re talking about a profound change in the economic models and systems.
AMY GOODMAN : Several years ago, Father Roy Bourgeois and others who founded the anti-School of the Americas movement at Fort Benning, Georgia, asked that &mdash; came and visited you in the palace and asked that Bolivia not send soldiers to train at the &mdash; what used to be called the School of the Americas, a place where Banzer, the dictator, had trained. Other countries are considering this ban. I think Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica have said they won&#8217;t send soldiers. Will Bolivia?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] So, it&#8217;s not just a question of not sending people. Perhaps it would be better to shut the School of the Americas. But I understand it&#8217;s also part of the survival and continuation of [inaudible] and to create a certain interventionist mindset.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I&#8217;d like to ask you perhaps a delicate question. You mentioned earlier your admiration for Fidel Castro. Fidel, before he stepped down, had been president for more than forty years, before he stepped down from day-to-day administration in the Cuban government. President Chávez now has been in office for two terms and is seeking to change the law to maintain himself in office. Do you think that the leader of a country, no matter how progressive, should have a limited amount of time in power?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] To put those kinds of limits may not be the most democratic. Here, what&#8217;s important is the conscience of a people. And so, our proposal, there has to be a way to revoke leadership roles, but also to ratify leadership, and this is for mayors, for governors, for regional leaders, as well as for presidents. If they have the support of the people, then they have every right to be ratified in power. And mayors, governors and presidents, they can also be revoked, their mandates can be revoked before they finish their terms, if that&#8217;s the will of the people. In fact, I&#8217;m seeing at this point that, through ratifying and returning people to power, it actually becomes an incentive for them to do a good &mdash; and continue to do a good and better job in their municipalities at the departmental levels in the positions that they hold, because the people have valued their work, and that&#8217;s why they&#8217;re ratified. But when they are not ratified, they take advantage of that fact, and they say, &quot;OK, I&#8217;m on my way out the door, so now is the time to steal, as my mandate is ending.&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : What is your assessment of President Bush?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] Why would I have to evaluate President Bush? I respect your country. One concern that I have is that in Iran &mdash; in Iraq, the massacre of the people cannot continue. I think that this is something that not only affects President Bush, but affects all the North American people. I think that in this new millennium, we fundamentally should be oriented towards saving lives and not ending lives. The differences continentally between countries, between regions, these should be discussed. And if there&#8217;s not agreements between governments and their presidents, why not submit these issues to the peoples to be decided upon? This would be the best way to do democracy now.
AMY GOODMAN : Bolivian President Evo Morales. He speaks today to the U.N. General Assembly. AMYGOODMAN: Today, a Democracy Now! special: We spend the hour with Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia. He traveled to New York this week, where he’s scheduled to speak before the United Nations General Assembly today. On Monday, he addressed a high-level U.N. meeting on climate change, during which he accused what he called "predatory capitalism" of affecting the environment.

Evo Morales first spoke before the U.N. General Assembly last year, where he dramatically brandished a coca leaf and vowed never to yield to U.S. pressure to criminalize coca production. Morales’s rise to power began with his leadership of the coca growers union in Bolivia and his high-profile opposition to the U.S.-funded eradication of the coca crop. He helped to lead the street demonstrations by Indian and union groups that toppled the country’s last two presidents.

An Aymara Indian, Evo Morales became the country’s first indigenous president when he was elected nearly two years ago with more popular support than any Bolivian leader in decades. Since then, he has moved to nationalize Bolivia’s oil and gas industry and is seeking a new constitution that would grant more power to Bolivia’s indigenous majority.

Today, we spend the hour with Evo Morales, talking about indigenous rights, biofuels, the Iraq War, establishing diplomatic relations with Iran, and the enduring legacy of Che Guevara on Latin America. Democracy Now!’s Juan González and I sat down with President Morales at the Bolivian mission here in New York. I began by asking President Morales what his message is this year to the U.N. General Assembly.

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] Last year was our first experience, my first time at the United Nations, as well as my first time in the United States. And as the coca leaf stands for and is symbolic of the struggle of the peoples for land and for their sovereignty, so last time I was here, it was my responsibility to talk about how it is that I came to become president of Bolivia.

But today, the most important thing is to talk about the changes that we’re forging in democracy through this cultural and democratic revolution in my country and at the same time share my enormous concern and to talk about things that are not just a regional or a local problem, but a global problem, and that’s the environment.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: One of the things that has happened, changes, obviously, is that just a few days ago, more than a week ago, the United Nations General Assembly passed an important declaration in terms of indigenous rights. Article 34, specifically, says that indigenous peoples have rights to promote, develop and maintain their institutional structures and their customs. How important is this to Bolivia in the current writing of the new constitution that you’re involved in now?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] First of all, we’d like to salute, thank and recognize the countries of the world that approved and voted for this Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, just as 50, 60 years ago, the United Nations for the first time recognized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it’s only now, over 500 years later, that indigenous people’s rights are being recognized. Happily, there were only a few countries that didn’t support this declaration.

And so, I want to say to the indigenous peoples, but also to the other peoples who live in the cities, that this is a very important thing that the struggle for indigenous people’s rights has not been in vain. And it was very important to get organized to mobilize. It took over 20 years, but, working together, people were able to do this, to approve this declaration and establish that we are people that have rights just like anyone else on earth.

In some cases, it will be to recognize the rights of minorities in some countries, this declaration. In my country, it’s to make sure that the majority is respected, and it will be respect for their institutions, for their structures. And this is an important contribution to unity within our country, but not because we have a declaration behind us recognized by the United Nations. It’s important that, even though this declaration exists, that doesn’t mean that we, as the majority, are going to be vengeful or use this as the majority.

I want you all to know, through the means of communication like yourself, I want the people of the United States and the people of the world to understand that the indigenous movement is not vengeful. We want to live together, respecting the difference and the diversity that we have. Some of the people in our country, when they saw that this declaration that came out that’s not just a declaration recognizing indigenous peoples, but also right to land, to self-determination, they think that we’re going to take a vengeful attitude, and I’m here to say never.

AMYGOODMAN: What do you think the message was of the four countries that voted no: Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the United States?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] It will be important for not the countries, but the people who lead those countries, their ambassadors, their leaders, to reflect and to embrace a recognition of indigenous people’s rights. I’m convinced that indigenous peoples are the moral reserve of humanity. So amongst indigenous peoples, there’s not a mentality of being individualist, personalist or egotistical, and therefore there’s not an attitude of trying to take over resources and control them for themselves. How nice it would be if those four countries, or better, for the presidents of those four countries, and along with the social forces, and especially the indigenous peoples, join together to save humanity.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But in practical terms, implementing this in your country is obviously creating many issues. You have 36 different nationalities among the native people. And the battle now, the constitutional battle over whether you’re going to have provincial autonomy or autonomy for these indigenous nations, how will that work itself out?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] First of all, dialogue and concerting, coming together. You’re right, though, when you recognize that there are some small groups in my country that still don’t recognize exclusion and racism as it exists in our country. And that’s why I call on the countries that not only supported this declaration, but also the countries that didn’t support this declaration, to come together and move forward to recognizing indigenous people’s rights, but without excluding anyone.

My government will guarantee departmental or state-level autonomies, but also local-level autonomies and indigenous people’s autonomies. A lot will depend on the specificities of these different regions. Sometimes there will be regional autonomies and local autonomies; sometimes there will be regional autonomies, as well as indigenous autonomies. And we’ll have to figure out how these different autonomies are going to work together. When we made our initial demands as indigenous, original peoples, there were people who reacted to and rejected our demands. But I want to tell these people now — and some people are originally from a place that dates back to a thousand years, some are much more contemporary, but we all have to learn how to live together.

AMYGOODMAN: Bolivian President Evo Morales. We’ll come back to our conversation in a minute.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: We return to our conversation with the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales. He’s addressing the United Nations General Assembly today. On Monday, he addressed a high-level U.N. meeting on climate change. Over 80 world leaders attended; President Bush did not. In it, Evo Morales spoke in his speech on Monday about referring to the need to prevent industrialized nations with their gas emissions from continuing harming the planet.

Democracy Now!, Juan González and I sat down with President Morales at the Bolivian mission. Juan asked President Morales about the issue of biofuels.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to ask you about the message that you’re going to be bringing to the United Nations, as well, over the issue of the use of agricultural products for biofuels, that clearly in Brazil President Lula has a different perspective. He is promoting the use of biofuels. What is your perspective on this issue?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] From the time that biofuels were first talked about, we’ve seen a spiraling process of speculation of land. There’s a whole speculation on grains like wheat, not only at the regional level within countries, but also internationally. So, therefore, the cost of agricultural products rises. And this is a product of that moment from which, going forward, people have been talking about biofuels.

And personally, in our movement, as well, we’re convinced that agricultural products should not be dedicated, directed towards automobiles, cars, and that lands be dedicated towards old rusted vehicles. First to people, before automobiles. And that’s our difference.

And we want to debate this, but we don’t want to debate it just as governments or presidents. We want to debate with our peoples, with the social forces in our countries, and I would even dare to say, at the South American regional level, submit this to a referendum of the peoples of South America and let the people say yes or no to different biofuels. This is something I’ve learned from Subcomandante Marcos, from his messages — that is, to govern obeying the people. That means to govern, but respecting the different proposals that social forces put on the table, because sometimes when a proposal is put on the table between presidents, arguments arise, and this can even generate confusion amongst people sometimes. And that’s why I consider it to be very important that people decide with their votes in a referendum about what the future biofuels is going to be. That would be the most democratic thing.

AMYGOODMAN: Mr. President, you’ve just established diplomatic relations with Iran. When the Iranian President Ahmadinejad leaves the United Nations General Assembly, New York, this week, he will first go to Bolivia. Why did you establish diplomatic relations?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] First of all, it’s important our peoples are from the culture of dialogue, so we have diplomatic relations with the United States, we have diplomatic relations with Cuba, just as we have diplomatic relations with France and with Iran, but, above all, diplomatic relations for life, for humanity, for peace with social justice.

In my country, we’re going to be opening commercial and diplomatic relations to establish relationships of complementarity so that we can resolve the social and economic problems that we confront. We’re never going to establish diplomatic relations to wage aggression or to hurt or to declare wars or to get involved in arms races. We’re not of the culture of death.

Moreover, I respect the technology, the industrial development in the area of gas and oil in Iran, and that’s what we’ve seen as interesting, that we can work together on these issues. And I’d like to agree with you. We haven’t ever thought about other issues in our relations. As far as I know, it’s not a country that’s sending troops to end other people’s lives in other countries. And I admire Cuba very much, for example, which sends people to other countries to help save lives.

AMYGOODMAN: Just to follow up on that point, has the United States weighed in? Has the United States responded to your diplomatic relations with Iran? And what do you think of the U.S. talking about perhaps attacking Iran?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] The United States, nor any other country, can observe or comment or have anything to say about the relationships that we have with any other countries. We’re a small country, but we’re a sovereign country with dignity, with the right to establish relations with whoever we want. If the United States government reacts, if they would have reacted, it would suggest that they are still thinking that Latin American countries need to be subordinate to the United States. But happily, in Latin America, there are countries with democracies that are liberating democracies, not subordinate democracies.

AMYGOODMAN: Your vice president has denounced U.S. funding of right-wing think tanks in Bolivia as intervening in internal affairs of your country.

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] Former ministers and vice minister of the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who, as you know, escaped to the United States, and the former President Banzer, who, may he rest in peace, as well as former President Tuto Quiroga, these former ministers are financed through foundations, NGOs, to create this counterweight to the government of Evo Morales. It’s impressive. And what we’re asking for is that all international cooperation be transparent, that it come through formally the central government.

AMYGOODMAN: What are those groups pushing for?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] First of all, these neoliberals, the right-wing organizations, the ones who sold out the country, as we say in Bolivia, is to exhaust the image of Evo Morales especially. And so, if they have objected, if they want to exhaust Evo Morales, it’s to be done with the government of Evo Morales. And these things circulated on the Internet, then pamphlets, [inaudible]; verbatim they say, "We have to overthrow this Indian (and leave that blank)," because I can’t repeat those words on the radio.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to ask you about the student protests that broke out recently there and the continuing battle over writing a new constitution. It’s been more than 13 months, and the Constituent Assembly, I understand, now is going to start meeting again. But the battle, especially over this issue of the capital for Bolivia, what is the significance of the battle over whether Sucre or La Paz should be the capital of Bolivia?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] Bolivia was founded in 1825, and the people who were participating, they were only 8 percent of the population; they were all mestizos or criollos. But who fought for the independence from Spain? It was that other 92 percent; it was the indigenous peoples. So we proposed to re-found the country, indigenous peoples, non-indigenous peoples, professional peoples, nonprofessional peoples, but to transform the country. Therefore, there are sectors that are seeking to undermine or make sure that the Constituent Assembly fails.

The enemies of this deep structural transformation that we’re pursuing, some of them have entered, are members of the Constituent Assembly, and they’ve been working from the very beginning, when the Constituent Assembly started on 6th of August, 2006, to undermine the process through the demand for two-thirds, the demand for autonomy, and now the demand to move the capital of the country.

This issue of where the capital is going to be located is not a national issue. It’s not a problem for the government. It’s an issue for just two departments. And there are families that don’t love their country and who are not working for the majorities, who are working for those people who have not been respected, the indigenous majorities, they’re talking about where the capital is going to be located as a tool to shut down the Constituent Assembly.

But what are we working for? What are we betting on? First, as the government and also as the indigenous movement, to make sure that the Constituent Assembly concludes successfully. It’s the best way to find unity, equality and justice, to forge that in my country.

And I would like to remember the words of a businessman, actually, from Bolivia. What did he say before the Constituent Assembly? "I’d rather have rocks in my door than bullets." What does that mean? That I would rather have these sorts of popular demonstrations and protests happening than a civil war, a fighting war with bullets.

And now, so that we have neither the protests nor the shooting war with bullets, we’re pursuing this deep structural transformation through a democratic process, which is the Constituent Assembly. How are we doing this? Through the creation of writing a new constitution for the country.

Of course, it’s going to be difficult to have equality, but to make those differences between people smaller is possible. Early in the process, only weeks into the process, they said that Evo Morales was not going to respect private property. That was another attack, another attempt to undermine and cause the Constituent Assembly to fail. With the powerful people above, what we’re trying to do is lift up the people, the humble people, from below, through using the strategic natural resources that we have to put them on a more equal footing.

And the other thing that they can’t accept is, how is it that what they call the Indians, that they feel for the country and they’re working for their people and that this Indian is governing well? This is something they can’t tolerate. Two facts: The last time that Bolivia had a budget surplus was in the 1960s during a boom, a tin boom, and we’ve been over 60 years always with a fiscal deficit. Last year, for the first time, in my first year of government, we have a budget surplus, and Bolivia’s international reserves never were more than $1 billion. And this year we’re approaching $5 billion in international reserves. And the modification of the hydrocarbons gas and oil law, which cost us blood, thereafter the nationalization of gas and oil, has allowed Bolivia to improve our revenues, the revenues for the country. An example: In 2005, Bolivia only received $300 million — $300 million in 2005 in revenues from state gas and oil, and this year we’re going to be receiving more than $2 billion in revenues from gas and oil. And this is something they can’t accept.

A political class, for them, government was business. It was enrichment. What they can’t accept is that our corruption in Bolivia has been declining. In the past, Bolivia was considered in the number two position in terms of the championship for the most corrupt country. Many international institutions have recognized that corruption is on the decline in Bolivia. And what these groups don’t accept is that this — what they call an "Indian" can change Bolivia, bring dignity to Bolivia.

And in this situation, some sectors are talking about the re-election of Evo Morales, and so this is something that would have to be become constitutionally permitted. But what do the right, the neoliberal, the opposition, say to this? And they say we can negotiate anything, but not the re-election of this Indian. This is the problem. It’s not a problem of where the capital of the country is located. And, of course, they never liked groups like the ones that you make reference to that will travel from Santa Cruz to Sucre to agitate, to stir up these issues.

AMYGOODMAN: Bolivian President Evo Morales. We’ll return to the conclusion, where he talks about the war in Iraq and the legacy of Che Guevara. Stay with us.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: We return to our conversation with the Bolivian President Evo Morales. The Bolivian Supreme Court recently asked the government to start extradition proceedings for the former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who lives here in the United States in Miami. They also asked for an order for him not to be allowed to go to another country, but to be sent back to Bolivia. I asked President Morales what the former president is guilty of and whether he thinks the United States will extradite him.

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] First of all, the United States cannot, should not receive, protect delinquents from any part of the world. It is unconscionable that the United States, a democratic country, would be protecting international criminals like Posada Carriles. The process has to do with two issues: first of all, human rights, and second of all, for economic damages done to the state. So people who massacre peoples, that violate human rights and do economic damage to countries and their economies have to go to jail. The United States shouldn’t be sitting there waiting for a process to be put into motion, but rather should kick these people out so that they can be submitted to justice.

I hope the United States respects these norms and respects the decision of our Supreme Court. But here, we have an experience. The last military dictator was sent to jail. And since that time, in Bolivia, no member of the military dares to threaten a coup d’état. Likewise, any democratic government that violates human rights, that massacres people or that does economic damage to the state should also be subject to these sorts of processes, and their leaders should be put in jail, so that they never dare to do it again either.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Mr. President, you said a few moments ago that you’d rather have protesters throwing rocks than using guns. In a few weeks, it will be the 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara. He died in Bolivia. Looking back at it — you were a child then — what is your sense of the legacy of Che Guevara to the people of Latin America?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] First of all, in the '40s, in the ’50s, in the ’60s — of course, when I hadn't been born yet — my first perception was that people rose up in arms to struggle against the empire. Now, I see quite the opposite, that it’s the empire that’s raising up arms against the peoples. What I think is that back then, that the peoples, they got organized and struggled, looking for justice, for equality. And now I think that these transformations, these structural transformations, are being forged through democracies.

And from these two points of view, Che Guevara continues to be a symbol of someone who gave his life for the peoples, when in Bolivia and in other countries around the world reigned military dictatorships. So that’s why it’s amazing to see that all over the world Che Guevara is still there, 40 years later. But now, we’re living in other times. But to value and recognize that thinking, that struggle, and if we recognize and we value it, that doesn’t mean it means to mechanically follow the steps that he took in terms of military uprising.

And that’s where, for example, I respect Fidel Castro. In 2003, I was invited to a conference in Havana, Cuba. And Fidel said the following: "Don’t do what I’ve done. Do what Chávez is doing: transformations through a constituent assembly." I think it was a good teaching, because we’ve seen the constituent assemblies in Venezuela, in Ecuador and now in Bolivia, as well, that through democracy we can achieve structural transformations.

AMYGOODMAN: What is the effect of the war on Iraq in Latin America, in Bolivia, in particular?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] There is a feeling that leads to the rejection, the repudiation of the United States government. This intervention of the United States in Iraq helps anti-imperialist thinking and feeling to grow. The pretext of fighting against terrorism and for security, with this pretext, they intervene and create all these deaths. But there are also other issues, economic issues, underlying it. I feel that we’re in a times of not looking to how to extinguish lives, but rather how to save lives.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to ask you about the issue of global warming. It’s become a major increasing discussion in many governments and around the world. From the perspective of the indigenous people of Bolivia, the future of the planet? And what policies must be adopted, especially by the industrialized countries?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] So if globalization does not admit difference and pluralism, if it’s a selective globalization, therefore it will be almost impossible to resolve environmental issues and save humanity. The most important contribution that indigenous peoples can make is to live in harmony with Mother Earth. We say the "Mother Earth," because the earth gives us life, and neither the Mother Earth nor life can be a commodity. So we’re talking about a profound change in the economic models and systems.

AMYGOODMAN: Several years ago, Father Roy Bourgeois and others who founded the anti-School of the Americas movement at Fort Benning, Georgia, asked that — came and visited you in the palace and asked that Bolivia not send soldiers to train at the — what used to be called the School of the Americas, a place where Banzer, the dictator, had trained. Other countries are considering this ban. I think Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica have said they won’t send soldiers. Will Bolivia?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] So, it’s not just a question of not sending people. Perhaps it would be better to shut the School of the Americas. But I understand it’s also part of the survival and continuation of [inaudible] and to create a certain interventionist mindset.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to ask you perhaps a delicate question. You mentioned earlier your admiration for Fidel Castro. Fidel, before he stepped down, had been president for more than forty years, before he stepped down from day-to-day administration in the Cuban government. President Chávez now has been in office for two terms and is seeking to change the law to maintain himself in office. Do you think that the leader of a country, no matter how progressive, should have a limited amount of time in power?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] To put those kinds of limits may not be the most democratic. Here, what’s important is the conscience of a people. And so, our proposal, there has to be a way to revoke leadership roles, but also to ratify leadership, and this is for mayors, for governors, for regional leaders, as well as for presidents. If they have the support of the people, then they have every right to be ratified in power. And mayors, governors and presidents, they can also be revoked, their mandates can be revoked before they finish their terms, if that’s the will of the people. In fact, I’m seeing at this point that, through ratifying and returning people to power, it actually becomes an incentive for them to do a good — and continue to do a good and better job in their municipalities at the departmental levels in the positions that they hold, because the people have valued their work, and that’s why they’re ratified. But when they are not ratified, they take advantage of that fact, and they say, "OK, I’m on my way out the door, so now is the time to steal, as my mandate is ending."

AMYGOODMAN: What is your assessment of President Bush?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] Why would I have to evaluate President Bush? I respect your country. One concern that I have is that in Iran — in Iraq, the massacre of the people cannot continue. I think that this is something that not only affects President Bush, but affects all the North American people. I think that in this new millennium, we fundamentally should be oriented towards saving lives and not ending lives. The differences continentally between countries, between regions, these should be discussed. And if there’s not agreements between governments and their presidents, why not submit these issues to the peoples to be decided upon? This would be the best way to do democracy now.

AMYGOODMAN: Bolivian President Evo Morales. He speaks today to the U.N. General Assembly.

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Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400As Police Arrest Public Housing Activists in New Orleans, Federal Officials Try to Silence Leading Attorney for Low-Income Residentshttp://www.democracynow.org/2007/1/31/as_police_arrest_public_housing_activists
tag:democracynow.org,2007-01-31:en/story/2d6ce2 AMY GOODMAN : Before the program, we received a call from one of the two people arrested this morning. &quot;Bork&quot; Loughner spoke with us from the Orleans Parish Prison. She described what happened.
JAMIE &quot; BORK &quot; LOUGHNER : Last night at 2:30 in the morning, MayDay NOLA , which had been in the middle of a 17-day occupation of the New Day Community Center, with permission of the leaseholders, had been raided by SWAT team members at gunpoint. It was quite scary.
We were there because we believed in the fact that people who lived in these public homes &mdash; St. Bernard Project and CJ Peete and the others &mdash; deserve to come back. There&#8217;s thousands of families that have been displaced, almost 5,000 units that are scheduled for demolishment, and we believe firmly that they shouldn&#8217;t be demolished, that people should be allowed to return home to New Orleans to their communities. We believe that these are internally displaced people here in the United States and that everything should be done to get them home.
The public housing development is in good shape. It was solid concrete walls. Even though it was flooded, it was architecturally sound, according to MIT architects. And there&#8217;s no reason for HANO to decide to hassle people who are just trying to reopen public housing in and even have them arrested, when they should be concentrating on getting housing back for families that need it.
AMY GOODMAN : Jamie &quot;Bork&quot; Loughner, speaking from the Orleans Parish Prison. She was arrested this morning.
Well, the battle over the future of public housing in New Orleans recently took an unexpected turn. A few days ago, the Housing Authority of New Orleans sent a letter to one of the lead lawyers for the residents, asking him to stop speaking to the media and to remove statements he made that appeared on several online videos. The letter accused attorney Bill Quigley of making &quot;prejudicial extrajudicial statements to the press and others.&quot; The New Orleans Housing Authority also threatened to haul Quigley in front of the state&#8217;s Bar Association&#8217;s disciplinary board if he doesn&#8217;t agree to stop discussing the case.
Bill Quigley joins us now from New Orleans, a law professor at Loyola University. We invited the New Orleans Housing Authority on the program; they didn&#8217;t respond to our request. Bill Quigley, what is happening in New Orleans?
BILL QUIGLEY : Well, thank you for helping explain what&#8217;s going on in New Orleans, but we are really engaged in a fight for the soul and spirit of our community. The public housing struggle is part of the overall struggle in the city to see that there is room in the new New Orleans for renters, for working-class people, for the elderly and for the disabled. We have significant racial overtones to who is being excluded from the city and very significant economic overtones in terms of who is been excluded from the city.
And the public housing struggle is about 4,500 affordable apartments that the federal government, HUD , is trying to demolish to make way for many fewer apartments that would be pitched to a different audience altogether. The people in charge in the federal government, in cooperation with some private developers in the areas, have actually seen Katrina as an opportunity to get rid of the lowest-income people in the community and to, in a sense, start over without the participation of people who used to live here, who could go back into their apartments on very short notice, and that the raid this morning and the charges that have been filed against residents who went back in to clean their own homes, the threats against myself and Tracie Washington, the civil rights lawyers who are working with the residents, just shows that this is really a pitched battle for who gets to come back to New Orleans and who is going to participate in the rebuilding.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re talking to Bill Quigley at PBS station WLAE in New Orleans. You&#8217;ve got a piece that&#8217;s on Counterpunch right now online: &quot;Why is HUD Using Tens of Millions in Katrina Money to Bulldoze 4,534 Public Housing Apartments in New Orleans When It Costs Less to Repair and Open Them Up?&quot; Well, what is the city saying? Do you have the support of, for example, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin?
BILL QUIGLEY : No. We really don&#8217;t. The residents have the support of very few elected officials. Most elected officials are remaining silent. They&#8217;re not coming out in favor of the demolition, but they&#8217;re also not opposing it. There&#8217;s a real transition going on in New Orleans over and a struggle over who&#8217;s going to be in charge. Is it going to be the white business community who is going to be politically and in every other way in charge of the community, or is it going to be the majority of the city who &mdash; or its citizens pre-Katrina, where the city was over two-thirds African American and over half renters and mostly-working class people? The white power structure, assisted in many cases by black professional workers, are in the process of trying to claim the city and claim a new vision for the city that does not include the people who used to live here.
And the tragedy is that they are using the money that Congress gave to the victims of Katrina, and they are what I call like a Robin Hood in reverse. They are stealing the money that should be coming to the low-income community, and instead converting that money and using it for property owners and the developers and the like. And in case of public housing, they&#8217;re using Katrina tax credits, they&#8217;re using Katrina rebuilding money in excess of $100 million and additional money to destroy houses that are structurally sound and are actually in better physical shape than almost any of the residential buildings in the city of New Orleans. So they are using money to help Katrina &mdash; that was designated to help Katrina victims, to destroy affordable housing, put money into the pockets of developers and then put up some other housing that they&#8217;re not going to let low-income people back into.
AMY GOODMAN : So where are these people, if they&#8217;re not allowed back home?
BILL QUIGLEY : Some are in the suburbs or around New Orleans in a Section 8 house or that, but most of the people are actually still very far away from New Orleans in Houston, in San Antonio, in Memphis, in Birmingham, Atlanta, and really do not have the ability to come back unless there is affordable housing available. Our rents in the city of New Orleans have gone up 70% in the city, 80% in the suburbs, because we still have tens of thousands of properties that are destroyed and demolished.
And the city is undergoing an overall privatization. They are privatizing the public education system. They are privatizing public housing. They are privatizing public healthcare, and they are privatizing the public employee&#8217;s work force. So the public housing is really the most visible symbol of the attack on the poor, the attack on African Americans, attack on the elderly, the disabled, renters and people who the powers that be in Washington, in Baton Rouge and in New Orleans would just as soon never come back.
AMY GOODMAN : What are you going to do about this demand that you be quiet, that you remove the video from the website that includes your comments. AP did a story on this, quoting Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, saying, &quot;To bypass the judge is unusual, and to make the threats is even more unusual.&quot;
BILL QUIGLEY : Yeah, I have been involved in a lot of controversial exchanges and struggles with governmental agencies in the past, but this is really &mdash; to have the federal government and the local government say, &quot;Stop talking to the press,&quot; insist that interviews on documentaries be taken down and the like is just &mdash; it&#8217;s very troubling. I have told them I&#8217;m not going to do it. I said no lawyer looks forward to anybody&#8217;s attempt to yank their license, or a gag order from the court, but I said we&#8217;re not going to do it. This is a fight that the residents and the residents&#8217; advocates, civil rights lawyers, are involved in that goes on in Congress, goes on in the state legislature, city council and every place. It&#8217;s not like some private divorce case, where you want both sides to be quiet and just handle it in court. This is an issue of public policy. It&#8217;s an issue of the direction of our country. It&#8217;s an issue of economic justice, and it&#8217;s actually, as the person who spoke to you from jail said, it is a matter of international concern. These are internally displaced people that the United Nations Human Rights Council has said have been mistreated on the basis of race an their economic status. So we&#8217;re not going to be quiet. The residents are not going to stop fighting.
AMY GOODMAN : Bill Quigley, just 30 seconds, then we have to move on. But 16 protesters were given prison terms this week. This is on an entirely different issue. But you&#8217;re the connection between them, an attorney for the School of the Americas protesters given prison terms ranging from one to six months during the annual demonstration. They were charged with trespassing.
BILL QUIGLEY : Yes. People, ages 17 to 70, went to federal court in Georgia earlier this week, and I was with them, gave beautiful testimony about their connections and solidarity with the people of Latin America who have been abused, killed, massacred by graduates of the School of the Americas, now called WHINSEC , that&#8217;s on the grounds of Fort Benning. So that&#8217;s part of an ongoing struggle, where over 200 people have spent 92 years in prison standing up in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Latin American. So people should take a look at the soaw.org website, and they can find some more about it.
AMY GOODMAN : Bill Quigley, thanks so much for joining us, law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. And a shout out to our friends at the PBS station WLAE , where he is. AMYGOODMAN: Before the program, we received a call from one of the two people arrested this morning. "Bork" Loughner spoke with us from the Orleans Parish Prison. She described what happened.

JAMIE "BORK" LOUGHNER: Last night at 2:30 in the morning, MayDay NOLA, which had been in the middle of a 17-day occupation of the New Day Community Center, with permission of the leaseholders, had been raided by SWAT team members at gunpoint. It was quite scary.

We were there because we believed in the fact that people who lived in these public homes — St. Bernard Project and CJ Peete and the others — deserve to come back. There’s thousands of families that have been displaced, almost 5,000 units that are scheduled for demolishment, and we believe firmly that they shouldn’t be demolished, that people should be allowed to return home to New Orleans to their communities. We believe that these are internally displaced people here in the United States and that everything should be done to get them home.

The public housing development is in good shape. It was solid concrete walls. Even though it was flooded, it was architecturally sound, according to MIT architects. And there’s no reason for HANO to decide to hassle people who are just trying to reopen public housing in and even have them arrested, when they should be concentrating on getting housing back for families that need it.

AMYGOODMAN: Jamie "Bork" Loughner, speaking from the Orleans Parish Prison. She was arrested this morning.

Well, the battle over the future of public housing in New Orleans recently took an unexpected turn. A few days ago, the Housing Authority of New Orleans sent a letter to one of the lead lawyers for the residents, asking him to stop speaking to the media and to remove statements he made that appeared on several online videos. The letter accused attorney Bill Quigley of making "prejudicial extrajudicial statements to the press and others." The New Orleans Housing Authority also threatened to haul Quigley in front of the state’s Bar Association’s disciplinary board if he doesn’t agree to stop discussing the case.

Bill Quigley joins us now from New Orleans, a law professor at Loyola University. We invited the New Orleans Housing Authority on the program; they didn’t respond to our request. Bill Quigley, what is happening in New Orleans?

BILLQUIGLEY: Well, thank you for helping explain what’s going on in New Orleans, but we are really engaged in a fight for the soul and spirit of our community. The public housing struggle is part of the overall struggle in the city to see that there is room in the new New Orleans for renters, for working-class people, for the elderly and for the disabled. We have significant racial overtones to who is being excluded from the city and very significant economic overtones in terms of who is been excluded from the city.

And the public housing struggle is about 4,500 affordable apartments that the federal government, HUD, is trying to demolish to make way for many fewer apartments that would be pitched to a different audience altogether. The people in charge in the federal government, in cooperation with some private developers in the areas, have actually seen Katrina as an opportunity to get rid of the lowest-income people in the community and to, in a sense, start over without the participation of people who used to live here, who could go back into their apartments on very short notice, and that the raid this morning and the charges that have been filed against residents who went back in to clean their own homes, the threats against myself and Tracie Washington, the civil rights lawyers who are working with the residents, just shows that this is really a pitched battle for who gets to come back to New Orleans and who is going to participate in the rebuilding.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re talking to Bill Quigley at PBS station WLAE in New Orleans. You’ve got a piece that’s on Counterpunch right now online: "Why is HUD Using Tens of Millions in Katrina Money to Bulldoze 4,534 Public Housing Apartments in New Orleans When It Costs Less to Repair and Open Them Up?" Well, what is the city saying? Do you have the support of, for example, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin?

BILLQUIGLEY: No. We really don’t. The residents have the support of very few elected officials. Most elected officials are remaining silent. They’re not coming out in favor of the demolition, but they’re also not opposing it. There’s a real transition going on in New Orleans over and a struggle over who’s going to be in charge. Is it going to be the white business community who is going to be politically and in every other way in charge of the community, or is it going to be the majority of the city who — or its citizens pre-Katrina, where the city was over two-thirds African American and over half renters and mostly-working class people? The white power structure, assisted in many cases by black professional workers, are in the process of trying to claim the city and claim a new vision for the city that does not include the people who used to live here.

And the tragedy is that they are using the money that Congress gave to the victims of Katrina, and they are what I call like a Robin Hood in reverse. They are stealing the money that should be coming to the low-income community, and instead converting that money and using it for property owners and the developers and the like. And in case of public housing, they’re using Katrina tax credits, they’re using Katrina rebuilding money in excess of $100 million and additional money to destroy houses that are structurally sound and are actually in better physical shape than almost any of the residential buildings in the city of New Orleans. So they are using money to help Katrina — that was designated to help Katrina victims, to destroy affordable housing, put money into the pockets of developers and then put up some other housing that they’re not going to let low-income people back into.

AMYGOODMAN: So where are these people, if they’re not allowed back home?

BILLQUIGLEY: Some are in the suburbs or around New Orleans in a Section 8 house or that, but most of the people are actually still very far away from New Orleans in Houston, in San Antonio, in Memphis, in Birmingham, Atlanta, and really do not have the ability to come back unless there is affordable housing available. Our rents in the city of New Orleans have gone up 70% in the city, 80% in the suburbs, because we still have tens of thousands of properties that are destroyed and demolished.

And the city is undergoing an overall privatization. They are privatizing the public education system. They are privatizing public housing. They are privatizing public healthcare, and they are privatizing the public employee’s work force. So the public housing is really the most visible symbol of the attack on the poor, the attack on African Americans, attack on the elderly, the disabled, renters and people who the powers that be in Washington, in Baton Rouge and in New Orleans would just as soon never come back.

AMYGOODMAN: What are you going to do about this demand that you be quiet, that you remove the video from the website that includes your comments. AP did a story on this, quoting Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, saying, "To bypass the judge is unusual, and to make the threats is even more unusual."

BILLQUIGLEY: Yeah, I have been involved in a lot of controversial exchanges and struggles with governmental agencies in the past, but this is really — to have the federal government and the local government say, "Stop talking to the press," insist that interviews on documentaries be taken down and the like is just — it’s very troubling. I have told them I’m not going to do it. I said no lawyer looks forward to anybody’s attempt to yank their license, or a gag order from the court, but I said we’re not going to do it. This is a fight that the residents and the residents’ advocates, civil rights lawyers, are involved in that goes on in Congress, goes on in the state legislature, city council and every place. It’s not like some private divorce case, where you want both sides to be quiet and just handle it in court. This is an issue of public policy. It’s an issue of the direction of our country. It’s an issue of economic justice, and it’s actually, as the person who spoke to you from jail said, it is a matter of international concern. These are internally displaced people that the United Nations Human Rights Council has said have been mistreated on the basis of race an their economic status. So we’re not going to be quiet. The residents are not going to stop fighting.

AMYGOODMAN: Bill Quigley, just 30 seconds, then we have to move on. But 16 protesters were given prison terms this week. This is on an entirely different issue. But you’re the connection between them, an attorney for the School of the Americas protesters given prison terms ranging from one to six months during the annual demonstration. They were charged with trespassing.

BILLQUIGLEY: Yes. People, ages 17 to 70, went to federal court in Georgia earlier this week, and I was with them, gave beautiful testimony about their connections and solidarity with the people of Latin America who have been abused, killed, massacred by graduates of the School of the Americas, now called WHINSEC, that’s on the grounds of Fort Benning. So that’s part of an ongoing struggle, where over 200 people have spent 92 years in prison standing up in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Latin American. So people should take a look at the soaw.org website, and they can find some more about it.

AMYGOODMAN: Bill Quigley, thanks so much for joining us, law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. And a shout out to our friends at the PBS station WLAE, where he is.

]]>
Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0500Argentine Torture Survivor Patricia Isasa Returns to Police Station Where She Was Imprisoned and Abusedhttp://www.democracynow.org/2006/11/16/argentine_torture_survivor_patricia_isasa_returns
tag:democracynow.org,2006-11-16:en/story/8c9448 AMY GOODMAN : One of those who disappeared but lived to tell her story is Patricia Isasa. She was only 16 in 1976, when she was kidnapped by police and soldiers, tortured and held prisoner without trial for two-and-a-half years. One of Patricia&#8217;s torturers was Domingo Marcelini. He&#8217;s a graduate of the School of the Americas.
A documentary about Patricia&#8217;s ordeal and her subsequent investigation to bring her torturers to justice premiered on Argentine television last May. It&#8217;s called El Cerco , and it features interviews with some of her torturers, who are now in prison awaiting trial. In the film, Patricia Isasa revisits the sites where she was held, and she describes her torture. This is an excerpt.
PATRICIA ISASA : I arrived here for the first time when I was 16 years old, July 30th at noon. They forced me through this hallway. This place was empty. First, they slammed me against the wall. They dragged me across the floor. They beat me. Then they tied my feet to my hands, which were already handcuffed. I was kept like this for one week. Two men appeared, and one of them told me that I had to talk. He said that the other guy was crazy and that I should talk for my own good. This crazy guy was Eduardo Ramos.
EDUARDO RAMOS : I entered the police force in 1973. While I was working for the police as an analyst, the government was overthrown. My job was to monitor terrorist groups in universities. Some people call it &quot;going undercover.&quot;
PATRICIA ISASA : After two days, they took the hood off me. They gave me water, a lemon, and they took me to the bathroom. Then Ramos and the other guy came back playing good cop and bad cop. I was told that Ramos was going to kill me and that I&#8217;d better talk.
EDUARDO RAMOS : I was not a typical policeman. I was more of a secret agent than a regular cop.
PATRICIA ISASA : I was thrown here. Ramos gave me a warning. He was insinuating that I would be raped. He said, &quot;Tell me if anyone touches you, because we are the only ones that can touch you.&quot; I was 16 years old. I couldn&#8217;t believe it. Ramos was telling me, &quot;You are my property. If I want, I can rape you.&quot;
Ramos was a spy at this law school. He turned in a lot of students here while pretending he was a law student.
My next step was to reconstruct my captivity at Police Station #4, where I learned what it was like to be tortured. This was a camp for torture and extermination run by Mario Jose Facino in 1976. Over here. This is it. It&#8217;s this place and this here. It&#8217;s both of these. These are the places where they tortured us. We&#8217;re looking at them from the outside, but I&#8217;m convinced, I&#8217;m telling you.
No, I can&#8217;t talk. Look, this is it. This is the place. They were over here. On this floor and at this window. This is where I spent the worst days of my life, simple as that. This was stuck, but I managed to open it. And through here, you could see, as you can now, the school. I could manage to see the school. These cracks &mdash; if you excuse me &mdash; this was stuck. You couldn&#8217;t open it. But to be able to see the school, I could suspect what street I was on and where I was being held. After talking with other detainees, we figured out that we were being held at Police Station #4.
I never thought that I would be standing in front of the bench that I was locked to. It&#8217;s incredible. 20, 25 years have passed. The bench that I was locked to when I was 16 is still here, same as ever. No one came to look at this place. There&#8217;s a case in Spain, a case in Argentina, and a case in Santa Fe fifteen blocks away from here, and no one was capable of coming over to look at this. I have to be the one to show it to you.
This is where I had to force myself not to use the bathroom. I was sent to an absolutely filthy room to pee. This was the only place where you could drink a little bit of water, and it&#8217;s all still here. Everything is still here, because no one has been held accountable.
And there, you could clearly see the cells. They were three feet by four feet. You couldn&#8217;t even lay down inside the cell. This was the central area where they tortured us. In 1976, the man responsible for the torture was Facino.
MARIO FACINO : I was not involved in any repressive group or anything like that. I was the supervisor of Police Station #4 in Santa Fe. I had an important job. My job was to detain people, who at that time were called subversives. Subversive delinquents.
PATRICIA ISASA : They put a hood on my head and tied my wrists to a rickety old bed. First, I remember feeling something cold on my stomach, and then I felt it. I felt the first electric shock. You feel this burning pain. It&#8217;s a horrible thing. They also humiliated me. They were laughing at me. They ejaculated onto me. They were enjoying themselves.
MARIO FACINO : She says they tortured her there. She says that they would lift off her hood and rape her. I doubt all of it.
PATRICIA ISASA : I recognize this place. This is it. I won&#8217;t ever forget it. I mean, this was the floor, I&#8217;m totally sure. And I was here three days. The worst three days of my life.
MARIO FACINO : A minor detained for subversive activities. No, no. It&#8217;s a lie. The woman, Patricia Isasa, says that the police detained her and she knows who detained her and where. Why she says it was at Police Station #4, I don&#8217;t know. I honestly don&#8217;t. But I can&#8217;t recall whether we detained her or not. But if we look at her records, it has to be recorded, where she was detained, when she was detained, and who detained her.
VICTOR BRUSA : I started working at the federal court as a student. When the government was overthrown, I was an employee of the court. I was 27, 28 years old. As a secretary for the judge, I would take statements in the office of the police station. The head of the police station had us take statements. Nothing more!
PATRICIA ISASA : They would hit you. They would torture you. They would hound you. Then they would pick you up and open this door for you. You would go through this door. And whom would you find on the other side? Brusa. This man was on the other side of the door. He would be writing, and he would take out a sheet of paper. You would be all beaten up, bleeding, naked. He&#8217;d throw you some clothes, and then he&#8217;d say, &quot;Here, sign this.&quot; Brusa!
AMY GOODMAN : An excerpt of El Cerco ( The Circle ), produced by the Argentine television station Telefe. This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org. When we come back, Patricia Isasa joins us live in studio. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN : Nine of Patricia Isasa&#8217;s torturers are in prison awaiting trial. In September, the Argentine President Nestor Kirchner ordered her into a witness protection program. This was after the disappearance of Jorge Julio Lopez, another torture survivor who had recently testified against his abuser. Patricia is scheduled to testify against her torturers in the coming months. She joins us now in our firehouse studio. Welcome, Patricia.
PATRICIA ISASA : Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN : What are you doing in the United States?
PATRICIA ISASA : Well, I&#8217;ve been here, because I received some threatens and &mdash;
AMY GOODMAN : Some death threats?
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes. In my house and in my office. I&#8217;m better here. And I came here, because tomorrow I will stay in the demonstration to try to close the School of America, because it&#8217;s a school with assassins, in general, but special. It&#8217;s the school who give the training with the most responsibility person in my case. The name of this person is Marcelini, Domingo Marcelini.
He received training in School of America, a terrible training, you know, in the School of America. When you come in, you are a soldier, but you came out, you became an assassin, because they train about torture. They have different techniques about torture, and this is terrible. It&#8217;s terrible &mdash; it&#8217;s not only for me &mdash; it&#8217;s terrible for a lot of people.
The School for America begin, start the road to Abu Ghraib. But in this road, firstly, they pass through Latin America, and in Latin America they have &mdash; they take off &mdash; they take away the life with a lot of people, a lot of people. And this is the point, because it is very important to close the School of America, because it&#8217;s an immoral place.
JUAN GONZALEZ : Now, you mentioned Domingo Marcelini.
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes.
JUAN GONZALEZ : Now, he was one of the people, a graduate, who was actually involved directly in your torture. Could you talk about his involvement and what happened with you?
PATRICIA ISASA : Well, what happened with me, the military kidnapped me when I was 16 years old. And &mdash;
AMY GOODMAN : You were in school?
PATRICIA ISASA : I am in the high school. I was an honor student. And I involved in student activities, only this. And I represent some students. I represent my students with the school, only this.
AMY GOODMAN : The student government.
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes.
JUAN GONZALEZ : And this was in the city of Santa Fe?
PATRICIA ISASA : This is in the city of Santa Fe. And then they kidnapped me. I&#8217;ve been disappeared for three months. What is disappeared? Disappeared is when nobody knows where you are, and you don&#8217;t know where you are. In fact, when I watched &mdash;- when I saw one lady who stayed disappeared, I understand where I am and what happened with me, because I understand this woman, when I watched, oh, she disappeared, but she&#8217;s alive, she&#8217;s here, I&#8217;m here -&mdash;
AMY GOODMAN : Because you knew before you were disappeared that this woman was disappeared, so you understood you had met the same fate.
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes, yes. And the first point is, when these guys talk to you, they say, &quot;You are murdered. Nobody know where you are. You don&#8217;t know where you are. And we are God.&quot;
AMY GOODMAN : What was happening with your family, with your dad, with your &mdash; was your mother alive at the time?
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes, yes. My mother was alive. My mother and father tried to find me for months and months and months. And finally, my father tried to find my body. And finally, I appeared.
AMY GOODMAN : How did you appear?
PATRICIA ISASA : Probably &mdash; I don&#8217;t know. I need some answers. I tried to find justice to have these answers: why they kidnapped me, why I released, why they tortured me. Why? Why? I need to know. Why exactly? I need this answer. For 30 years, I need this answer. I tried to find this answer. It&#8217;s not only for me. It&#8217;s for my family, for the memory with my mom, and for the Argentine people. We need the answer &mdash; why they made these crimes, why they made this massacre against their own people, because Marcelini was Argentine. It&#8217;s unbelievable, but he&#8217;s Argentine.
He trained as a soldier, but he became an assassin. He fight against their own people, and he broke the honor with the military. When the military have an honor, I hope to have an honor. And what is the honor for the military? You can&#8217;t to kill other people who don&#8217;t have a gun. And they killed not people who don&#8217;t have a gun. They killed innocent people, undressed people. They killed a lot of people. This is &mdash; they broke with honor.
JUAN GONZALEZ : Let me ask you, after they held you for two-and-a-half years, when they finally released you, what were the circumstances? What did they say when they released you? Where did they leave you?
PATRICIA ISASA : I remember when they say &mdash; they told me, &quot;If you tell this story, nobody believe you, because it&#8217;s unbelievable.&quot; But I said for myself, I am going to tell this story. It&#8217;s not only for me, because for me, it&#8217;s happened, more or less, but this happened. But to don&#8217;t repeat, some people need to know what happened in Argentina and need to know what&#8217;s happening in all the clandestine jails around the world, because today we have a lot of clandestine jails &mdash; look, like Guantanamo, for example, and Abu Ghraib &mdash; to know.
AMY GOODMAN : Did you just show up at your house after two-and-a-half years? You just show up after they released you? Your parents had been looking for you for two-and-a-half years, assumed you were dead. You just showed up on the doorstep of your house and said, &quot;I am here&quot;?
PATRICIA ISASA : No, no. My parents &mdash; when they released me, my parents meet with me firstly, and it&#8217;s a special, really &mdash; a special and unbelievable moment, because I remember I&#8217;m &mdash; the first time only strange, because I lived in a small &mdash; for two years and a half I stayed in a small, small place. For six months, I stayed all the time, 24 hours, with very strong lights, but strong lights 24 hours for six months. For six months. And we don&#8217;t know what day is the day, what time is it, and this is terrible.
And finally, when I release, I remember the nature. Now, the sand, the streets. When you&#8217;re released, you return to life, and the life is great. And I think probably when I lives in the concentration camp, when I have this strong experience, probably I reevaluate: what&#8217;s great is the life.
AMY GOODMAN : We&#8217;re talking to Patricia Isasa, who, when she was 16, was kidnapped, disappeared, tortured, raped, released two-and-a-half years later. About ten, nine, eight years ago you began this search &mdash;
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : &mdash; for the people who tortured you.
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : How did you find them? It is you who have landed them in jail and who will testify against them. Where did you start?
PATRICIA ISASA : Well, I start with a simple point, because I &mdash; this story is in a small town. And when you live in a small town, some people know each other. And I speak. I asked questions with different people, and I speak, speak, speak. And then I have a little simple information, and I took this information. I tried to phone more and more and more, and I found one document. But when I found one document, I found another and another and another, and then I found a lot of document in different archives with the police and with &mdash; for the justice, from different archives.
And then, I make a very big search, and I explain what happened during the repression in Argentina. because in Argentina, they tried to lie and said &quot;Dirty War.&quot; It is not a war, because a war is two armies fight each other. It&#8217;s not a war. It&#8217;s lies. Look like the war in Iraq? It&#8217;s not a war. It&#8217;s invasion. What is the other army in Iraq? They don&#8217;t have an army now. What is the other army? What is? Don&#8217;t have! They fight against the innocent people. They kill a lot of people, a lot of innocent people, kids, old ladies, men. It&#8217;s not a war. War is a problem for the humanity. War is not a solution for the humanity. We need peace. We need to think about peace. We need to give peace a chance.
JUAN GONZALEZ : Let me ask you, when you began to do this search and gather the documents, I think some things had changed in Argentina, but not everything. At least the military dictatorship was ended by then, but you had to go outside of the country first, right?
PATRICIA ISASA : Mm-hmm.
JUAN GONZALEZ : You went to the famous Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon.
PATRICIA ISASA : Si .
JUAN GONZALEZ : Could you talk about that, why you felt the need to go outside of the country?
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes, because for 20 years, we have an impunity law. They stop the justice for 20 years. But it&#8217;s no more different than today. Yesterday, I watch in the news one group with lawyers try to find justice against Rumsfeld, a terrible criminal, in Germany. If you don&#8217;t have justice in your country, you need to find justice in any places. It&#8217;s a tragedy, because I need to cross the ocean with all of my documents, and I show the documents for Baltasar Garzon. I spoke for five &mdash;- more than five hours. And finally he told me, &quot;What can I do?&quot; I said, &quot;Please, request for these people.&quot; And he did the -&mdash;
AMY GOODMAN : And just to be clear, Baltasar Garzon is the famous judge who went after Pinochet, when he was in Britain, the dictator of Chile, and had him detained. So, you went to him, the documents. And so, what did he do?
PATRICIA ISASA : He request an international request for these criminals, and finally, during 2001, they stay for a short time in jail. The perpetrators in my case, they stayed for a few, few times, 39 days. And then, because to try to go to Madrid, because Baltasar Garzon give the international request to the police.
JUAN GONZALEZ : So, now, he issued an arrest order of them to be extradited to Spain?
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes, to try to extradite with it. But the President de la Rua signed to don&#8217;t extradite. But the point is, if you sign to don&#8217;t extradite, to don&#8217;t give the extradition, you need to open a trial. And you open a trial, finally. I opened a trial in Argentina in 2002. But I need to wait two, three, four years more to open finally, to really open a trial. And now, these perpetrators are in jail, and we are waiting for a &mdash;- we said &quot;oral trial.&quot; It&#8217;s a -&mdash;
AMY GOODMAN : So they haven&#8217;t actually been tried. They&#8217;re held in jail, and they&#8217;re awaiting trial.
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : And we&#8217;re talking about their positions today. One was a mayor of Santa Fe?
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes. He stay in jail. One is a mayor, another is a [inaudible]. The point is this. The boss with the concentration camps, 20 years, 25 years later became a mayor. The interrogator with the torture place, 25 years later, he became a federal judge.
AMY GOODMAN : A judge?
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes. Federal judge. A powerful man. The group with &mdash; they tortured the people, who tortured you, [inaudible] who rob you, who put the [inaudible], these kind of people became very powerful people in the police, in a high position with the police.
AMY GOODMAN : And you showed, all of them, their addresses, where they were, and so they were picked up?
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes. They ID all. All &mdash; and some documents &mdash; I found some documents, which they sign to kidnap people, for example, because they have a very important bureaucracy. They are bureaucrats.
AMY GOODMAN : Bureaucrats.
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes. They&#8217;re bureaucrats, yes.
JUAN GONZALEZ : And you mentioned earlier that for 20 years, there was a law of impunity. In effect, what happened is after the military dictatorship, there was a deal made that there would not be prosecution of those who had conducted the terrorism. Was that what happened?
PATRICIA ISASA : No. In the first time, during the first time with a [inaudible], we have a trial against the high position in the military, a trial against the junta, the comandante , as we said in Spanish, but during 1987, they tried to make a coup, and then they make a deal, and it happened, impunity law. And we have this impunity law for 15 years. Last 2004, President Kirshner take away the impunity law.
JUAN GONZALEZ : So it was President Kirshner who basically paved the way for the people down the chain of command who participated in the torture to be held responsible?
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes. He opened the door to make trials in Argentina.
AMY GOODMAN : And Patricia, it is the president, Kirshner, who has put you under protection, ever since what happened in September. September 18th, Jorge Julio Lopez went missing, a day before the former police commissioner, Miguel Etchecolatz was sentenced to life in prison for the murder, torture and kidnapping of six people. 900 former officers and collaborators from the military dictatorship could reportedly face trial right now, face charges?
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : So when you are in Argentina, you&#8217;re under protection?
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes.
AMY GOODMAN : When do you testify? Are you afraid to return? You have tens of thousands of people, what, 100,000 protesters marched in the streets of Buenos Aires in October, demanding the release of Jorge Julio Lopez. But he&#8217;s gone now, went missing twice, first when he was captured in the 1970s and tortured, and now again.
PATRICIA ISASA : Yes. Probably the paramilitary killed him, suppose they killed him.
AMY GOODMAN : So, why would you return?
PATRICIA ISASA : Because it&#8217;s my compromise with my life; because I need to find justice; because Argentina is my place, is my home; because I have rights to return; because I talk about the [inaudible]; because I need answers, and I tried to find this answer for the trials in my own place; because I have rights to stay in this place.
And the perpetrators will need to take away, to put in jail, with a good trial. I never have a trial. But I tried they have a trial. I never have a defense. They never showed me the proof. But I prefer, we are going to show the proof for them. They need to make a good trial, because we need justice, because we need to mark a line, a line to divide the crazy people, the bad people, the assassin people, with the normal people. The normal people would like &mdash; we need to live in peace.
AMY GOODMAN : Patricia Isasa, I want to thank you very much for being with us, as you head now down to Fort Benning, Georgia, to join thousands of people protesting the training of Latin American officers at the Georgia base. Thank you for joining us. We&#8217;ll continue to follow your story. AMYGOODMAN: One of those who disappeared but lived to tell her story is Patricia Isasa. She was only 16 in 1976, when she was kidnapped by police and soldiers, tortured and held prisoner without trial for two-and-a-half years. One of Patricia’s torturers was Domingo Marcelini. He’s a graduate of the School of the Americas.

A documentary about Patricia’s ordeal and her subsequent investigation to bring her torturers to justice premiered on Argentine television last May. It’s called El Cerco, and it features interviews with some of her torturers, who are now in prison awaiting trial. In the film, Patricia Isasa revisits the sites where she was held, and she describes her torture. This is an excerpt.

PATRICIAISASA: I arrived here for the first time when I was 16 years old, July 30th at noon. They forced me through this hallway. This place was empty. First, they slammed me against the wall. They dragged me across the floor. They beat me. Then they tied my feet to my hands, which were already handcuffed. I was kept like this for one week. Two men appeared, and one of them told me that I had to talk. He said that the other guy was crazy and that I should talk for my own good. This crazy guy was Eduardo Ramos.

EDUARDORAMOS: I entered the police force in 1973. While I was working for the police as an analyst, the government was overthrown. My job was to monitor terrorist groups in universities. Some people call it "going undercover."

PATRICIAISASA: After two days, they took the hood off me. They gave me water, a lemon, and they took me to the bathroom. Then Ramos and the other guy came back playing good cop and bad cop. I was told that Ramos was going to kill me and that I’d better talk.

EDUARDORAMOS: I was not a typical policeman. I was more of a secret agent than a regular cop.

PATRICIAISASA: I was thrown here. Ramos gave me a warning. He was insinuating that I would be raped. He said, "Tell me if anyone touches you, because we are the only ones that can touch you." I was 16 years old. I couldn’t believe it. Ramos was telling me, "You are my property. If I want, I can rape you."

Ramos was a spy at this law school. He turned in a lot of students here while pretending he was a law student.

My next step was to reconstruct my captivity at Police Station #4, where I learned what it was like to be tortured. This was a camp for torture and extermination run by Mario Jose Facino in 1976. Over here. This is it. It’s this place and this here. It’s both of these. These are the places where they tortured us. We’re looking at them from the outside, but I’m convinced, I’m telling you.

No, I can’t talk. Look, this is it. This is the place. They were over here. On this floor and at this window. This is where I spent the worst days of my life, simple as that. This was stuck, but I managed to open it. And through here, you could see, as you can now, the school. I could manage to see the school. These cracks — if you excuse me — this was stuck. You couldn’t open it. But to be able to see the school, I could suspect what street I was on and where I was being held. After talking with other detainees, we figured out that we were being held at Police Station #4.

I never thought that I would be standing in front of the bench that I was locked to. It’s incredible. 20, 25 years have passed. The bench that I was locked to when I was 16 is still here, same as ever. No one came to look at this place. There’s a case in Spain, a case in Argentina, and a case in Santa Fe fifteen blocks away from here, and no one was capable of coming over to look at this. I have to be the one to show it to you.

This is where I had to force myself not to use the bathroom. I was sent to an absolutely filthy room to pee. This was the only place where you could drink a little bit of water, and it’s all still here. Everything is still here, because no one has been held accountable.

And there, you could clearly see the cells. They were three feet by four feet. You couldn’t even lay down inside the cell. This was the central area where they tortured us. In 1976, the man responsible for the torture was Facino.

MARIOFACINO: I was not involved in any repressive group or anything like that. I was the supervisor of Police Station #4 in Santa Fe. I had an important job. My job was to detain people, who at that time were called subversives. Subversive delinquents.

PATRICIAISASA: They put a hood on my head and tied my wrists to a rickety old bed. First, I remember feeling something cold on my stomach, and then I felt it. I felt the first electric shock. You feel this burning pain. It’s a horrible thing. They also humiliated me. They were laughing at me. They ejaculated onto me. They were enjoying themselves.

MARIOFACINO: She says they tortured her there. She says that they would lift off her hood and rape her. I doubt all of it.

PATRICIAISASA: I recognize this place. This is it. I won’t ever forget it. I mean, this was the floor, I’m totally sure. And I was here three days. The worst three days of my life.

MARIOFACINO: A minor detained for subversive activities. No, no. It’s a lie. The woman, Patricia Isasa, says that the police detained her and she knows who detained her and where. Why she says it was at Police Station #4, I don’t know. I honestly don’t. But I can’t recall whether we detained her or not. But if we look at her records, it has to be recorded, where she was detained, when she was detained, and who detained her.

VICTORBRUSA: I started working at the federal court as a student. When the government was overthrown, I was an employee of the court. I was 27, 28 years old. As a secretary for the judge, I would take statements in the office of the police station. The head of the police station had us take statements. Nothing more!

PATRICIAISASA: They would hit you. They would torture you. They would hound you. Then they would pick you up and open this door for you. You would go through this door. And whom would you find on the other side? Brusa. This man was on the other side of the door. He would be writing, and he would take out a sheet of paper. You would be all beaten up, bleeding, naked. He’d throw you some clothes, and then he’d say, "Here, sign this." Brusa!

AMYGOODMAN: An excerpt of El Cerco (The Circle), produced by the Argentine television station Telefe. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. When we come back, Patricia Isasa joins us live in studio. Stay with us.

[break]

AMYGOODMAN: Nine of Patricia Isasa’s torturers are in prison awaiting trial. In September, the Argentine President Nestor Kirchner ordered her into a witness protection program. This was after the disappearance of Jorge Julio Lopez, another torture survivor who had recently testified against his abuser. Patricia is scheduled to testify against her torturers in the coming months. She joins us now in our firehouse studio. Welcome, Patricia.

PATRICIAISASA: Thank you.

AMYGOODMAN: What are you doing in the United States?

PATRICIAISASA: Well, I’ve been here, because I received some threatens and —

AMYGOODMAN: Some death threats?

PATRICIAISASA: Yes. In my house and in my office. I’m better here. And I came here, because tomorrow I will stay in the demonstration to try to close the School of America, because it’s a school with assassins, in general, but special. It’s the school who give the training with the most responsibility person in my case. The name of this person is Marcelini, Domingo Marcelini.

He received training in School of America, a terrible training, you know, in the School of America. When you come in, you are a soldier, but you came out, you became an assassin, because they train about torture. They have different techniques about torture, and this is terrible. It’s terrible — it’s not only for me — it’s terrible for a lot of people.

The School for America begin, start the road to Abu Ghraib. But in this road, firstly, they pass through Latin America, and in Latin America they have — they take off — they take away the life with a lot of people, a lot of people. And this is the point, because it is very important to close the School of America, because it’s an immoral place.

JUANGONZALEZ: Now, you mentioned Domingo Marcelini.

PATRICIAISASA: Yes.

JUANGONZALEZ: Now, he was one of the people, a graduate, who was actually involved directly in your torture. Could you talk about his involvement and what happened with you?

PATRICIAISASA: Well, what happened with me, the military kidnapped me when I was 16 years old. And —

AMYGOODMAN: You were in school?

PATRICIAISASA: I am in the high school. I was an honor student. And I involved in student activities, only this. And I represent some students. I represent my students with the school, only this.

AMYGOODMAN: The student government.

PATRICIAISASA: Yes.

JUANGONZALEZ: And this was in the city of Santa Fe?

PATRICIAISASA: This is in the city of Santa Fe. And then they kidnapped me. I’ve been disappeared for three months. What is disappeared? Disappeared is when nobody knows where you are, and you don’t know where you are. In fact, when I watched —- when I saw one lady who stayed disappeared, I understand where I am and what happened with me, because I understand this woman, when I watched, oh, she disappeared, but she’s alive, she’s here, I’m here -—

AMYGOODMAN: Because you knew before you were disappeared that this woman was disappeared, so you understood you had met the same fate.

PATRICIAISASA: Yes, yes. And the first point is, when these guys talk to you, they say, "You are murdered. Nobody know where you are. You don’t know where you are. And we are God."

AMYGOODMAN: What was happening with your family, with your dad, with your — was your mother alive at the time?

PATRICIAISASA: Yes, yes. My mother was alive. My mother and father tried to find me for months and months and months. And finally, my father tried to find my body. And finally, I appeared.

AMYGOODMAN: How did you appear?

PATRICIAISASA: Probably — I don’t know. I need some answers. I tried to find justice to have these answers: why they kidnapped me, why I released, why they tortured me. Why? Why? I need to know. Why exactly? I need this answer. For 30 years, I need this answer. I tried to find this answer. It’s not only for me. It’s for my family, for the memory with my mom, and for the Argentine people. We need the answer — why they made these crimes, why they made this massacre against their own people, because Marcelini was Argentine. It’s unbelievable, but he’s Argentine.

He trained as a soldier, but he became an assassin. He fight against their own people, and he broke the honor with the military. When the military have an honor, I hope to have an honor. And what is the honor for the military? You can’t to kill other people who don’t have a gun. And they killed not people who don’t have a gun. They killed innocent people, undressed people. They killed a lot of people. This is — they broke with honor.

JUANGONZALEZ: Let me ask you, after they held you for two-and-a-half years, when they finally released you, what were the circumstances? What did they say when they released you? Where did they leave you?

PATRICIAISASA: I remember when they say — they told me, "If you tell this story, nobody believe you, because it’s unbelievable." But I said for myself, I am going to tell this story. It’s not only for me, because for me, it’s happened, more or less, but this happened. But to don’t repeat, some people need to know what happened in Argentina and need to know what’s happening in all the clandestine jails around the world, because today we have a lot of clandestine jails — look, like Guantanamo, for example, and Abu Ghraib — to know.

AMYGOODMAN: Did you just show up at your house after two-and-a-half years? You just show up after they released you? Your parents had been looking for you for two-and-a-half years, assumed you were dead. You just showed up on the doorstep of your house and said, "I am here"?

PATRICIAISASA: No, no. My parents — when they released me, my parents meet with me firstly, and it’s a special, really — a special and unbelievable moment, because I remember I’m — the first time only strange, because I lived in a small — for two years and a half I stayed in a small, small place. For six months, I stayed all the time, 24 hours, with very strong lights, but strong lights 24 hours for six months. For six months. And we don’t know what day is the day, what time is it, and this is terrible.

And finally, when I release, I remember the nature. Now, the sand, the streets. When you’re released, you return to life, and the life is great. And I think probably when I lives in the concentration camp, when I have this strong experience, probably I reevaluate: what’s great is the life.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re talking to Patricia Isasa, who, when she was 16, was kidnapped, disappeared, tortured, raped, released two-and-a-half years later. About ten, nine, eight years ago you began this search —

PATRICIAISASA: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: — for the people who tortured you.

PATRICIAISASA: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: How did you find them? It is you who have landed them in jail and who will testify against them. Where did you start?

PATRICIAISASA: Well, I start with a simple point, because I — this story is in a small town. And when you live in a small town, some people know each other. And I speak. I asked questions with different people, and I speak, speak, speak. And then I have a little simple information, and I took this information. I tried to phone more and more and more, and I found one document. But when I found one document, I found another and another and another, and then I found a lot of document in different archives with the police and with — for the justice, from different archives.

And then, I make a very big search, and I explain what happened during the repression in Argentina. because in Argentina, they tried to lie and said "Dirty War." It is not a war, because a war is two armies fight each other. It’s not a war. It’s lies. Look like the war in Iraq? It’s not a war. It’s invasion. What is the other army in Iraq? They don’t have an army now. What is the other army? What is? Don’t have! They fight against the innocent people. They kill a lot of people, a lot of innocent people, kids, old ladies, men. It’s not a war. War is a problem for the humanity. War is not a solution for the humanity. We need peace. We need to think about peace. We need to give peace a chance.

JUANGONZALEZ: Let me ask you, when you began to do this search and gather the documents, I think some things had changed in Argentina, but not everything. At least the military dictatorship was ended by then, but you had to go outside of the country first, right?

PATRICIAISASA: Mm-hmm.

JUANGONZALEZ: You went to the famous Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon.

PATRICIAISASA:Si.

JUANGONZALEZ: Could you talk about that, why you felt the need to go outside of the country?

PATRICIAISASA: Yes, because for 20 years, we have an impunity law. They stop the justice for 20 years. But it’s no more different than today. Yesterday, I watch in the news one group with lawyers try to find justice against Rumsfeld, a terrible criminal, in Germany. If you don’t have justice in your country, you need to find justice in any places. It’s a tragedy, because I need to cross the ocean with all of my documents, and I show the documents for Baltasar Garzon. I spoke for five —- more than five hours. And finally he told me, "What can I do?" I said, "Please, request for these people." And he did the -—

AMYGOODMAN: And just to be clear, Baltasar Garzon is the famous judge who went after Pinochet, when he was in Britain, the dictator of Chile, and had him detained. So, you went to him, the documents. And so, what did he do?

PATRICIAISASA: He request an international request for these criminals, and finally, during 2001, they stay for a short time in jail. The perpetrators in my case, they stayed for a few, few times, 39 days. And then, because to try to go to Madrid, because Baltasar Garzon give the international request to the police.

JUANGONZALEZ: So, now, he issued an arrest order of them to be extradited to Spain?

PATRICIAISASA: Yes, to try to extradite with it. But the President de la Rua signed to don’t extradite. But the point is, if you sign to don’t extradite, to don’t give the extradition, you need to open a trial. And you open a trial, finally. I opened a trial in Argentina in 2002. But I need to wait two, three, four years more to open finally, to really open a trial. And now, these perpetrators are in jail, and we are waiting for a —- we said "oral trial." It’s a -—

AMYGOODMAN: So they haven’t actually been tried. They’re held in jail, and they’re awaiting trial.

PATRICIAISASA: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: And we’re talking about their positions today. One was a mayor of Santa Fe?

PATRICIAISASA: Yes. He stay in jail. One is a mayor, another is a [inaudible]. The point is this. The boss with the concentration camps, 20 years, 25 years later became a mayor. The interrogator with the torture place, 25 years later, he became a federal judge.

AMYGOODMAN: A judge?

PATRICIAISASA: Yes. Federal judge. A powerful man. The group with — they tortured the people, who tortured you, [inaudible] who rob you, who put the [inaudible], these kind of people became very powerful people in the police, in a high position with the police.

AMYGOODMAN: And you showed, all of them, their addresses, where they were, and so they were picked up?

PATRICIAISASA: Yes. They ID all. All — and some documents — I found some documents, which they sign to kidnap people, for example, because they have a very important bureaucracy. They are bureaucrats.

AMYGOODMAN: Bureaucrats.

PATRICIAISASA: Yes. They’re bureaucrats, yes.

JUANGONZALEZ: And you mentioned earlier that for 20 years, there was a law of impunity. In effect, what happened is after the military dictatorship, there was a deal made that there would not be prosecution of those who had conducted the terrorism. Was that what happened?

PATRICIAISASA: No. In the first time, during the first time with a [inaudible], we have a trial against the high position in the military, a trial against the junta, the comandante, as we said in Spanish, but during 1987, they tried to make a coup, and then they make a deal, and it happened, impunity law. And we have this impunity law for 15 years. Last 2004, President Kirshner take away the impunity law.

JUANGONZALEZ: So it was President Kirshner who basically paved the way for the people down the chain of command who participated in the torture to be held responsible?

PATRICIAISASA: Yes. He opened the door to make trials in Argentina.

AMYGOODMAN: And Patricia, it is the president, Kirshner, who has put you under protection, ever since what happened in September. September 18th, Jorge Julio Lopez went missing, a day before the former police commissioner, Miguel Etchecolatz was sentenced to life in prison for the murder, torture and kidnapping of six people. 900 former officers and collaborators from the military dictatorship could reportedly face trial right now, face charges?

PATRICIAISASA: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: So when you are in Argentina, you’re under protection?

PATRICIAISASA: Yes.

AMYGOODMAN: When do you testify? Are you afraid to return? You have tens of thousands of people, what, 100,000 protesters marched in the streets of Buenos Aires in October, demanding the release of Jorge Julio Lopez. But he’s gone now, went missing twice, first when he was captured in the 1970s and tortured, and now again.

PATRICIAISASA: Because it’s my compromise with my life; because I need to find justice; because Argentina is my place, is my home; because I have rights to return; because I talk about the [inaudible]; because I need answers, and I tried to find this answer for the trials in my own place; because I have rights to stay in this place.

And the perpetrators will need to take away, to put in jail, with a good trial. I never have a trial. But I tried they have a trial. I never have a defense. They never showed me the proof. But I prefer, we are going to show the proof for them. They need to make a good trial, because we need justice, because we need to mark a line, a line to divide the crazy people, the bad people, the assassin people, with the normal people. The normal people would like — we need to live in peace.

AMYGOODMAN: Patricia Isasa, I want to thank you very much for being with us, as you head now down to Fort Benning, Georgia, to join thousands of people protesting the training of Latin American officers at the Georgia base. Thank you for joining us. We’ll continue to follow your story.

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Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0500Bolivia Delegation Urges U.S. to Notify Ex-President Sanchez de Lozada of Obligation to Return to Trial for 2003 Massacrehttp://www.democracynow.org/2006/10/5/bolivia_delegation_urges_u_s_to
tag:democracynow.org,2006-10-05:en/story/cf41f3 AMY GOODMAN : Rogelio Mayta joins us in our firehouse studio. We&#8217;re also joined by Oscar Olivera, the executive secretary of the Bolivian Federation of Factory Workers and spokesperson for the Committee in the Defense of Water and Life in Cochabamba. Oscar emerged in 2000 as the leader of the nationwide protest movement against water privatization in Bolivia. He&#8217;s in New York for a conference at the Cornel Global Labor Institute, where he&#8217;s meeting with trade union leaders and labor-based researchers from a number of countries. They&#8217;re being translated by Tom Fritzsche. And we welcome you all to Democracy Now! Rogelio Mayta, explain exactly what happened in 2003?
ROGELIO MAYTA : [translated] During the second term of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, Bolivia was living through a term, a period of high unemployment and poverty. Bolivia has experienced historically the exploitation of its natural resources. During that period, the government wanted to export the gas under very unfavorable terms for the Bolivian people. The social movements and the people had mobilized in order to oppose that possibility.
The government of then-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, under the argument of giving legal security to transnationals, began military repression of social protests. In those days, especially between the 20th of September and the first days of October of 2003, there were true military operations against unarmed civilian populations. It was about scaring the people so that they would stop protesting. 67 people have been murdered, and more than 400 were wounded, because of the military repression actions. Among them were a girl of eight years and a five-year-old boy.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, two weeks ago, we had an hour-long conversation with Bolivian President Evo Morales. He was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. In one of his first extended televised interviews in the United States, Morales talked about Latin America, U.S. foreign policy, the role of the indigenous people of Bolivia, and he called on the U.S. to extradite his predecessor, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] I&#8217;m not sure. That&#8217;s probably something for the United States to take up, but I want to take advantage of this opportunity to call on the people of the United States to help us in our efforts to extradite two [inaudible] people who practiced genocide, who were corrupt under previous administrations and who today are free here in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN : Names?
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, former president, who in 2003 was responsible for the death of over a hundred people killed by gunfire, along with his minister, Carlos Sanchez Berzain. We&#8217;re trying now to use all of the instruments at our disposal to extradite him, but it&#8217;s not moving forward. It&#8217;s running into some resistance here in the United States. A government that says it fights against terrorism, for human rights, against corruption, it&#8217;s not conceivable that this person would still be here. So we ask the people, the government and all the institutions of human rights to help with this.
AMY GOODMAN : Bolivian President Evo Morales, speaking to us several weeks ago in New York City. Our guests, Rogelio Mayta, attorney who has come to ask for the extradition of the president and two ministers, and we&#8217;ll also be speaking with Oscar Olivera. Rogelio Mayta, you have photographs. For our listeners, we&#8217;ll post them on our website at democracynow.org. For our viewers, if you would hold them up and describe them?
ROGELIO MAYTA : [translated] This resistance of the Bolivian people has been a peaceful resistance: civilians against armed forces; people protesting peacefully, answered with lethal weapons. It&#8217;s not that there&#8217;s been a gas war. That&#8217;s false. A war is when there are two armed groups. In Bolivia in October 2003, there was a massacre.
AMY GOODMAN : Lozada, the former president, how did he end up in the United States?
ROGELIO MAYTA : [translated] October 17, 2003, after resigning, he came directly to the United States. Now, we&#8217;re worried, because now the United States government is impeding and obstructing a process for the hundreds of victims to have justice.
AMY GOODMAN : Did Lozada, the former Bolivian president, come to the U.S. in a U.S. plane?
ROGELIO MAYTA : [translated] He came in a commercial airline.
AMY GOODMAN : Have you specifically asked the State Department, have you specifically requested of the U.S. government his extradition?
ROGELIO MAYTA : [translated] Not yet. Under Bolivian law, before proceeding to extradition, we have to show the charges that are against him. But for the last year and three months, the United States government has not listened to the Bolivian petition to realize that request. Without that action of notification, we cannot continue with the process. So we&#8217;re not even talking about extradition yet. We&#8217;re only talking about an initial action.
AMY GOODMAN : I wanted to go to another comment of Bolivian President Evo Morales, who talked about the importance of natural resources in Bolivia, and specifically the issue of water in indigenous communities.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] I think it&#8217;s important to democratize the United Nations so that we can deal with issues like humanity, how to save the planet, how to avoid loss. The indigenous communities live in harmony not only with their fellow persons, but also with Mother Earth. And we&#8217;re very worried about global warming, that&#8217;s leaving people without water. In the past we&#8217;ve seen the bodies of water that were up to certain level, are now declining. That means that in a very short time we&#8217;re going to have very serious problems. Without light, we can live with lamps, with oil lamps, but without water, we can&#8217;t live.
AMY GOODMAN : Bolivian President Evo Morales. In our studio, as well as Rogelio Mayta, we&#8217;re joined by Oscar Olivera, perhaps the most well-known activist in Bolivia. And we welcome you to Democracy Now! , Oscar Olivera.
OSCAR OLIVERA : Gracias , Amy.
AMY GOODMAN : The issue of water. You are particularly well known for taking on a major U.S. multinational, Bechtel. Tell us what happened in Cochabamba and where that stands today?
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] In reality, the confrontation with Bechtel and other businesses has been the proposition of converting water into a commodity. We&#8217;ve only been spokespeople for that demand, that water should not be converted into a commodity. Six years later, the theme, the matter of water in Cochabamba has not been concluded. There are still attempts from the World Bank, with international cooperation, to privatize water. Still, any breach of contract with the multinationals could be submitted to tribunals in the World Bank.
AMY GOODMAN : But could you explain, though it&#8217;s well-known in Bolivia, hardly known here at all, though it&#8217;s a U.S. company, what happened in Cochabamba? Talk about what Bechtel tried to do and what the people responded.
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] It&#8217;s not that Bechtel tried to do it. They did it. They increased the charges for water, the cost of water, by 300%, so that every family had to pay, for this water service, one-fifth of their income.
AMY GOODMAN : How did they get control of the water? I mean, here, you turn on the tap. You don&#8217;t pay.
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] The government, under a law that was passed, conceded control of the water under a monopoly to Bechtel in a certain area. So that means that Bechtel tried to charge a fee and had the monopoly power over a very basic necessity for people. The law said even that people had to ask, had to obtain a permit to collect rainwater. That means that even rainwater was privatized. The most serious thing was that indigenous communities and farming communities, who for years had their own water rights, those water sources were converted into property that could be bought and sold by international corporations.
In confronting that situation, the people rose up, confronted Bechtel, and during five months of mobilization, managed to defeat Bechtel, breach the contract and change the law. But the most important thing &mdash; and we need to remind Evo Morales of that today &mdash; was that that victory of the people in Cochabamba was the reason why Evo Morales could be president today. If that uprising in 2000 had not ended in a popular victory, Evo Morales today would not be the president.
AMY GOODMAN : Why do you say you have to remind President Evo Morales?
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] Because Evo does not talk today about that struggle. And he was not the principal protagonist in that struggle, nor was it Oscar Olivera. It was the Bolivian people, which up until the 18th of December, when Evo Morales was elected, was the primary protagonist in that struggle. At this time, Evo Morales is in the government because the people put him there so that we can continue pushing together. He is in the government to obey what the people has decided. He needs to change the political and economic systems of the country. We&#8217;re going to continue pushing forward that process, which means recovering our common goods, as well as our capacity to decide.
AMY GOODMAN : Who died in that struggle back in 2000?
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] In that struggle, a 17-year-old boy named Victor Hugo Daza was killed along with four indigenous Aymara in El Alto.
AMY GOODMAN : Every November in the United States is a mass protest against the School of the Americas. That&#8217;s the old name for it. Were there any connections with the soldiers and the School?
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] Of course, there were connections. At that time, the president, Hugo Banzer Suarez, and the mayor of Cochabamba had gone to the School of the Americas. And also the soldier who actually killed the youth, who we mentioned, also had been a graduate of the School of the Americas.
AMY GOODMAN : Finally, today, you are in the United States meeting with trade union leaders. What are you doing with them?
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] What we want, as the program says, is democracy now for everyone. Today, there should be five people at this roundtable, but instead, there&#8217;s only four. The best democracy in the world, which supposedly is the United States of America, the government of the United States did not permit that Juan Patricio Quispe, the brother of a man who was killed in 2003, could come here today. The American embassy refused to give him a visa so that he could come and give his testimony about the suffering of the people. But the government of the United States allows the presence of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to be here, and they don&#8217;t even want to give him the paper of notification, so that he has to respond to the accusations in Bolivia.
AMY GOODMAN : Where does he live here?
OSCAR OLIVERA : In Washington.
AMY GOODMAN : D.C.?
OSCAR OLIVERA : D.C. [translated] And soon, we&#8217;re going to do an action at his house to demand to the government and to ask to the American people that they help us in bringing Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to justice.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to thank you both very much for being here. When will you do that at Lozada&#8217;s house?
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] It&#8217;s going to be this weekend.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, we will cover the event. I want to thank you both for joining us. Oscar Olivera, we&#8217;ve spoken to you on the phone. It&#8217;s good to have you in our studio. And Rogelio Mayta, we will continue to follow your attempts to have the former president and two ministers of Bolivia extradited. AMYGOODMAN: Rogelio Mayta joins us in our firehouse studio. We’re also joined by Oscar Olivera, the executive secretary of the Bolivian Federation of Factory Workers and spokesperson for the Committee in the Defense of Water and Life in Cochabamba. Oscar emerged in 2000 as the leader of the nationwide protest movement against water privatization in Bolivia. He’s in New York for a conference at the Cornel Global Labor Institute, where he’s meeting with trade union leaders and labor-based researchers from a number of countries. They’re being translated by Tom Fritzsche. And we welcome you all to Democracy Now! Rogelio Mayta, explain exactly what happened in 2003?

ROGELIOMAYTA: [translated] During the second term of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, Bolivia was living through a term, a period of high unemployment and poverty. Bolivia has experienced historically the exploitation of its natural resources. During that period, the government wanted to export the gas under very unfavorable terms for the Bolivian people. The social movements and the people had mobilized in order to oppose that possibility.

The government of then-President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, under the argument of giving legal security to transnationals, began military repression of social protests. In those days, especially between the 20th of September and the first days of October of 2003, there were true military operations against unarmed civilian populations. It was about scaring the people so that they would stop protesting. 67 people have been murdered, and more than 400 were wounded, because of the military repression actions. Among them were a girl of eight years and a five-year-old boy.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, two weeks ago, we had an hour-long conversation with Bolivian President Evo Morales. He was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. In one of his first extended televised interviews in the United States, Morales talked about Latin America, U.S. foreign policy, the role of the indigenous people of Bolivia, and he called on the U.S. to extradite his predecessor, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] I’m not sure. That’s probably something for the United States to take up, but I want to take advantage of this opportunity to call on the people of the United States to help us in our efforts to extradite two [inaudible] people who practiced genocide, who were corrupt under previous administrations and who today are free here in the United States.

AMYGOODMAN: Names?

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, former president, who in 2003 was responsible for the death of over a hundred people killed by gunfire, along with his minister, Carlos Sanchez Berzain. We’re trying now to use all of the instruments at our disposal to extradite him, but it’s not moving forward. It’s running into some resistance here in the United States. A government that says it fights against terrorism, for human rights, against corruption, it’s not conceivable that this person would still be here. So we ask the people, the government and all the institutions of human rights to help with this.

AMYGOODMAN: Bolivian President Evo Morales, speaking to us several weeks ago in New York City. Our guests, Rogelio Mayta, attorney who has come to ask for the extradition of the president and two ministers, and we’ll also be speaking with Oscar Olivera. Rogelio Mayta, you have photographs. For our listeners, we’ll post them on our website at democracynow.org. For our viewers, if you would hold them up and describe them?

ROGELIOMAYTA: [translated] This resistance of the Bolivian people has been a peaceful resistance: civilians against armed forces; people protesting peacefully, answered with lethal weapons. It’s not that there’s been a gas war. That’s false. A war is when there are two armed groups. In Bolivia in October 2003, there was a massacre.

AMYGOODMAN: Lozada, the former president, how did he end up in the United States?

ROGELIOMAYTA: [translated] October 17, 2003, after resigning, he came directly to the United States. Now, we’re worried, because now the United States government is impeding and obstructing a process for the hundreds of victims to have justice.

AMYGOODMAN: Did Lozada, the former Bolivian president, come to the U.S. in a U.S. plane?

ROGELIOMAYTA: [translated] He came in a commercial airline.

AMYGOODMAN: Have you specifically asked the State Department, have you specifically requested of the U.S. government his extradition?

ROGELIOMAYTA: [translated] Not yet. Under Bolivian law, before proceeding to extradition, we have to show the charges that are against him. But for the last year and three months, the United States government has not listened to the Bolivian petition to realize that request. Without that action of notification, we cannot continue with the process. So we’re not even talking about extradition yet. We’re only talking about an initial action.

AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to go to another comment of Bolivian President Evo Morales, who talked about the importance of natural resources in Bolivia, and specifically the issue of water in indigenous communities.

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] I think it’s important to democratize the United Nations so that we can deal with issues like humanity, how to save the planet, how to avoid loss. The indigenous communities live in harmony not only with their fellow persons, but also with Mother Earth. And we’re very worried about global warming, that’s leaving people without water. In the past we’ve seen the bodies of water that were up to certain level, are now declining. That means that in a very short time we’re going to have very serious problems. Without light, we can live with lamps, with oil lamps, but without water, we can’t live.

AMYGOODMAN: Bolivian President Evo Morales. In our studio, as well as Rogelio Mayta, we’re joined by Oscar Olivera, perhaps the most well-known activist in Bolivia. And we welcome you to Democracy Now!, Oscar Olivera.

OSCAROLIVERA:Gracias, Amy.

AMYGOODMAN: The issue of water. You are particularly well known for taking on a major U.S. multinational, Bechtel. Tell us what happened in Cochabamba and where that stands today?

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] In reality, the confrontation with Bechtel and other businesses has been the proposition of converting water into a commodity. We’ve only been spokespeople for that demand, that water should not be converted into a commodity. Six years later, the theme, the matter of water in Cochabamba has not been concluded. There are still attempts from the World Bank, with international cooperation, to privatize water. Still, any breach of contract with the multinationals could be submitted to tribunals in the World Bank.

AMYGOODMAN: But could you explain, though it’s well-known in Bolivia, hardly known here at all, though it’s a U.S. company, what happened in Cochabamba? Talk about what Bechtel tried to do and what the people responded.

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] It’s not that Bechtel tried to do it. They did it. They increased the charges for water, the cost of water, by 300%, so that every family had to pay, for this water service, one-fifth of their income.

AMYGOODMAN: How did they get control of the water? I mean, here, you turn on the tap. You don’t pay.

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] The government, under a law that was passed, conceded control of the water under a monopoly to Bechtel in a certain area. So that means that Bechtel tried to charge a fee and had the monopoly power over a very basic necessity for people. The law said even that people had to ask, had to obtain a permit to collect rainwater. That means that even rainwater was privatized. The most serious thing was that indigenous communities and farming communities, who for years had their own water rights, those water sources were converted into property that could be bought and sold by international corporations.

In confronting that situation, the people rose up, confronted Bechtel, and during five months of mobilization, managed to defeat Bechtel, breach the contract and change the law. But the most important thing — and we need to remind Evo Morales of that today — was that that victory of the people in Cochabamba was the reason why Evo Morales could be president today. If that uprising in 2000 had not ended in a popular victory, Evo Morales today would not be the president.

AMYGOODMAN: Why do you say you have to remind President Evo Morales?

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] Because Evo does not talk today about that struggle. And he was not the principal protagonist in that struggle, nor was it Oscar Olivera. It was the Bolivian people, which up until the 18th of December, when Evo Morales was elected, was the primary protagonist in that struggle. At this time, Evo Morales is in the government because the people put him there so that we can continue pushing together. He is in the government to obey what the people has decided. He needs to change the political and economic systems of the country. We’re going to continue pushing forward that process, which means recovering our common goods, as well as our capacity to decide.

AMYGOODMAN: Who died in that struggle back in 2000?

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] In that struggle, a 17-year-old boy named Victor Hugo Daza was killed along with four indigenous Aymara in El Alto.

AMYGOODMAN: Every November in the United States is a mass protest against the School of the Americas. That’s the old name for it. Were there any connections with the soldiers and the School?

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] Of course, there were connections. At that time, the president, Hugo Banzer Suarez, and the mayor of Cochabamba had gone to the School of the Americas. And also the soldier who actually killed the youth, who we mentioned, also had been a graduate of the School of the Americas.

AMYGOODMAN: Finally, today, you are in the United States meeting with trade union leaders. What are you doing with them?

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] What we want, as the program says, is democracy now for everyone. Today, there should be five people at this roundtable, but instead, there’s only four. The best democracy in the world, which supposedly is the United States of America, the government of the United States did not permit that Juan Patricio Quispe, the brother of a man who was killed in 2003, could come here today. The American embassy refused to give him a visa so that he could come and give his testimony about the suffering of the people. But the government of the United States allows the presence of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to be here, and they don’t even want to give him the paper of notification, so that he has to respond to the accusations in Bolivia.

AMYGOODMAN: Where does he live here?

OSCAROLIVERA: In Washington.

AMYGOODMAN: D.C.?

OSCAROLIVERA: D.C. [translated] And soon, we’re going to do an action at his house to demand to the government and to ask to the American people that they help us in bringing Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to justice.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to thank you both very much for being here. When will you do that at Lozada’s house?

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] It’s going to be this weekend.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, we will cover the event. I want to thank you both for joining us. Oscar Olivera, we’ve spoken to you on the phone. It’s good to have you in our studio. And Rogelio Mayta, we will continue to follow your attempts to have the former president and two ministers of Bolivia extradited.

]]>
Thu, 05 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0400Bolivian Activist Oscar Olivera on Bechtel's Privatization of Rainwater and Why Evo Morales Should Remember the Ongoing Struggle Over Waterhttp://www.democracynow.org/2006/10/5/bolivian_activist_oscar_olivera_on_bechtels
tag:democracynow.org,2006-10-05:en/story/1442dd AMY GOODMAN : I wanted to go to another comment of Bolivian President Evo Morales, who talked about the importance of natural resources in Bolivia, and specifically the issue of water in indigenous communities.
PRESIDENT EVO MORALES : [translated] I think it&#8217;s important to democratize the United Nations so that we can deal with issues like humanity, how to save the planet, how to avoid loss. The indigenous communities live in harmony not only with their fellow persons, but also with Mother Earth. And we&#8217;re very worried about global warming, that&#8217;s leaving people without water. In the past we&#8217;ve seen the bodies of water that were up to certain level, are now declining. That means that in a very short time we&#8217;re going to have very serious problems. Without light, we can live with lamps, with oil lamps, but without water, we can&#8217;t live.
AMY GOODMAN : Bolivian President Evo Morales. In our studio, as well as Rogelio Mayta, we&#8217;re joined by Oscar Olivera, perhaps the most well-known activist in Bolivia. And we welcome you to Democracy Now! , Oscar Olivera.
OSCAR OLIVERA : Gracias , Amy.
AMY GOODMAN : The issue of water. You are particularly well known for taking on a major U.S. multinational, Bechtel. Tell us what happened in Cochabamba and where that stands today?
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] In reality, the confrontation with Bechtel and other businesses has been the proposition of converting water into a commodity. We&#8217;ve only been spokespeople for that demand, that water should not be converted into a commodity. Six years later, the theme, the matter of water in Cochabamba has not been concluded. There are still attempts from the World Bank, with international cooperation, to privatize water. Still, any breach of contract with the multinationals could be submitted to tribunals in the World Bank.
AMY GOODMAN : But could you explain, though it&#8217;s well-known in Bolivia, hardly known here at all, though it&#8217;s a U.S. company, what happened in Cochabamba? Talk about what Bechtel tried to do and what the people responded.
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] It&#8217;s not that Bechtel tried to do it. They did it. They increased the charges for water, the cost of water, by 300%, so that every family had to pay, for this water service, one-fifth of their income.
AMY GOODMAN : How did they get control of the water? I mean, here, you turn on the tap. You don&#8217;t pay.
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] The government, under a law that was passed, conceded control of the water under a monopoly to Bechtel in a certain area. So that means that Bechtel tried to charge a fee and had the monopoly power over a very basic necessity for people. The law said even that people had to ask, had to obtain a permit to collect rainwater. That means that even rainwater was privatized. The most serious thing was that indigenous communities and farming communities, who for years had their own water rights, those water sources were converted into property that could be bought and sold by international corporations.
In confronting that situation, the people rose up, confronted Bechtel, and during five months of mobilization, managed to defeat Bechtel, breach the contract and change the law. But the most important thing &mdash; and we need to remind Evo Morales of that today &mdash; was that that victory of the people in Cochabamba was the reason why Evo Morales could be president today. If that uprising in 2000 had not ended in a popular victory, Evo Morales today would not be the president.
AMY GOODMAN : Why do you say you have to remind President Evo Morales?
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] Because Evo does not talk today about that struggle. And he was not the principal protagonist in that struggle, nor was it Oscar Olivera. It was the Bolivian people, which up until the 18th of December, when Evo Morales was elected, was the primary protagonist in that struggle. At this time, Evo Morales is in the government because the people put him there so that we can continue pushing together. He is in the government to obey what the people has decided. He needs to change the political and economic systems of the country. We&#8217;re going to continue pushing forward that process, which means recovering our common goods, as well as our capacity to decide.
AMY GOODMAN : Who died in that struggle back in 2000?
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] In that struggle, a 17-year-old boy named Victor Hugo Daza was killed along with four indigenous Aymara in El Alto.
AMY GOODMAN : Every November in the United States is a mass protest against the School of the Americas. That&#8217;s the old name for it. Were there any connections with the soldiers and the School?
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] Of course, there were connections. At that time, the president, Hugo Banzer Suarez, and the mayor of Cochabamba had gone to the School of the Americas. And also the soldier who actually killed the youth, who we mentioned, also had been a graduate of the School of the Americas.
AMY GOODMAN : Finally, today, you are in the United States meeting with trade union leaders. What are you doing with them?
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] What we want, as the program says, is democracy now for everyone. Today, there should be five people at this roundtable, but instead, there&#8217;s only four. The best democracy in the world, which supposedly is the United States of America, the government of the United States did not permit that Juan Patricio Quispe, the brother of a man who was killed in 2003, could come here today. The American embassy refused to give him a visa so that he could come and give his testimony about the suffering of the people. But the government of the United States allows the presence of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to be here, and they don&#8217;t even want to give him the paper of notification, so that he has to respond to the accusations in Bolivia.
AMY GOODMAN : Where does he live here?
OSCAR OLIVERA : In Washington.
AMY GOODMAN : D.C.?
OSCAR OLIVERA : D.C. [translated] And soon, we&#8217;re going to do an action at his house to demand to the government and to ask to the American people that they help us in bringing Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to justice.
AMY GOODMAN : I want to thank you both very much for being here. When will you do that at Lozada&#8217;s house?
OSCAR OLIVERA : [translated] It&#8217;s going to be this weekend.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, we will cover the event. I want to thank you both for joining us. Oscar Olivera, we&#8217;ve spoken to you on the phone. It&#8217;s good to have you in our studio. And Rogelio Mayta, we will continue to follow your attempts to have the former president and two ministers of Bolivia extradited. AMYGOODMAN: I wanted to go to another comment of Bolivian President Evo Morales, who talked about the importance of natural resources in Bolivia, and specifically the issue of water in indigenous communities.

PRESIDENTEVOMORALES: [translated] I think it’s important to democratize the United Nations so that we can deal with issues like humanity, how to save the planet, how to avoid loss. The indigenous communities live in harmony not only with their fellow persons, but also with Mother Earth. And we’re very worried about global warming, that’s leaving people without water. In the past we’ve seen the bodies of water that were up to certain level, are now declining. That means that in a very short time we’re going to have very serious problems. Without light, we can live with lamps, with oil lamps, but without water, we can’t live.

AMYGOODMAN: Bolivian President Evo Morales. In our studio, as well as Rogelio Mayta, we’re joined by Oscar Olivera, perhaps the most well-known activist in Bolivia. And we welcome you to Democracy Now!, Oscar Olivera.

OSCAROLIVERA:Gracias, Amy.

AMYGOODMAN: The issue of water. You are particularly well known for taking on a major U.S. multinational, Bechtel. Tell us what happened in Cochabamba and where that stands today?

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] In reality, the confrontation with Bechtel and other businesses has been the proposition of converting water into a commodity. We’ve only been spokespeople for that demand, that water should not be converted into a commodity. Six years later, the theme, the matter of water in Cochabamba has not been concluded. There are still attempts from the World Bank, with international cooperation, to privatize water. Still, any breach of contract with the multinationals could be submitted to tribunals in the World Bank.

AMYGOODMAN: But could you explain, though it’s well-known in Bolivia, hardly known here at all, though it’s a U.S. company, what happened in Cochabamba? Talk about what Bechtel tried to do and what the people responded.

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] It’s not that Bechtel tried to do it. They did it. They increased the charges for water, the cost of water, by 300%, so that every family had to pay, for this water service, one-fifth of their income.

AMYGOODMAN: How did they get control of the water? I mean, here, you turn on the tap. You don’t pay.

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] The government, under a law that was passed, conceded control of the water under a monopoly to Bechtel in a certain area. So that means that Bechtel tried to charge a fee and had the monopoly power over a very basic necessity for people. The law said even that people had to ask, had to obtain a permit to collect rainwater. That means that even rainwater was privatized. The most serious thing was that indigenous communities and farming communities, who for years had their own water rights, those water sources were converted into property that could be bought and sold by international corporations.

In confronting that situation, the people rose up, confronted Bechtel, and during five months of mobilization, managed to defeat Bechtel, breach the contract and change the law. But the most important thing — and we need to remind Evo Morales of that today — was that that victory of the people in Cochabamba was the reason why Evo Morales could be president today. If that uprising in 2000 had not ended in a popular victory, Evo Morales today would not be the president.

AMYGOODMAN: Why do you say you have to remind President Evo Morales?

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] Because Evo does not talk today about that struggle. And he was not the principal protagonist in that struggle, nor was it Oscar Olivera. It was the Bolivian people, which up until the 18th of December, when Evo Morales was elected, was the primary protagonist in that struggle. At this time, Evo Morales is in the government because the people put him there so that we can continue pushing together. He is in the government to obey what the people has decided. He needs to change the political and economic systems of the country. We’re going to continue pushing forward that process, which means recovering our common goods, as well as our capacity to decide.

AMYGOODMAN: Who died in that struggle back in 2000?

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] In that struggle, a 17-year-old boy named Victor Hugo Daza was killed along with four indigenous Aymara in El Alto.

AMYGOODMAN: Every November in the United States is a mass protest against the School of the Americas. That’s the old name for it. Were there any connections with the soldiers and the School?

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] Of course, there were connections. At that time, the president, Hugo Banzer Suarez, and the mayor of Cochabamba had gone to the School of the Americas. And also the soldier who actually killed the youth, who we mentioned, also had been a graduate of the School of the Americas.

AMYGOODMAN: Finally, today, you are in the United States meeting with trade union leaders. What are you doing with them?

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] What we want, as the program says, is democracy now for everyone. Today, there should be five people at this roundtable, but instead, there’s only four. The best democracy in the world, which supposedly is the United States of America, the government of the United States did not permit that Juan Patricio Quispe, the brother of a man who was killed in 2003, could come here today. The American embassy refused to give him a visa so that he could come and give his testimony about the suffering of the people. But the government of the United States allows the presence of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to be here, and they don’t even want to give him the paper of notification, so that he has to respond to the accusations in Bolivia.

AMYGOODMAN: Where does he live here?

OSCAROLIVERA: In Washington.

AMYGOODMAN: D.C.?

OSCAROLIVERA: D.C. [translated] And soon, we’re going to do an action at his house to demand to the government and to ask to the American people that they help us in bringing Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to justice.

AMYGOODMAN: I want to thank you both very much for being here. When will you do that at Lozada’s house?

OSCAROLIVERA: [translated] It’s going to be this weekend.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, we will cover the event. I want to thank you both for joining us. Oscar Olivera, we’ve spoken to you on the phone. It’s good to have you in our studio. And Rogelio Mayta, we will continue to follow your attempts to have the former president and two ministers of Bolivia extradited.